Management Of Innovation Research Paper

However, the notion that creativity and innovation are easy, positive, opportunistic processes is inappropriate. Conflict is a common characteristic of innovation, observable principally in resistance to change. Innovation by definition represents a threat to the status quo, so for a group or organization to implement innovation successfully, its members must manage conflict with the attendant emotional pain and difficulty, overcome resistance to change, and persist in ensuring the successful implementation of their innovative proposal. And innovations do not always have beneficial outcomes. An innovation is often a mistake after the event. Moreover, even creativity appears to be a consequence of hard work or as Csikszentmihalyi and Sawyer (1995, p. 331) suggest ‘… 99 per cent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.’

To make sense of this domain of social science research without recourse to complex academic definitions it is useful to distinguish between creativity and innovation implementation. Creativity can be seen as the development of new ideas, while innovation implementation is the application of those new ideas in practice. Using this distinction between creativity and innovation implementation it becomes clearer that creativity is more a characteristic of individuals, while innovation implementation tends to be accomplished by groups, organizations, or societies. Indeed, there is evidence that people are most creative when they work alone.

Creativity requires individuals with creative characteristics, who feel free from threat and pressure, and work in a supportive environment. Innovation re-quires diversity, integration, external challenge or demand, and practical support for innovation.

1. Individual Innovation

1.1 Individual Characteristics

The innovation process begins with the creativity of individuals, so the generation of a new idea is a cognitive process, located within individuals, albeit fostered by interaction processes, for example, in teams (Mumford and Gustafson 1988). Thus, first and foremost, innovative individuals are both creative and innovative (i.e., they don’t just have creative ideas, they also try to implement them). These are people who have a preference for thinking in novel ways; who think globally instead of locally (distinguishing the wood from the trees); and who have intellectual abilities that include synthetic abilities (to see problems in new ways and escape the bounds of conventional thinking), analytic abilities to recognize which ideas are worth pursuing, and the practical contextual abilities to persuade others of the value of their ideas (Sternberg and Lubart 1996).

To be innovative and creative also requires sufficient knowledge of the field to be able to move it forward, while not being so conceptually trapped in it as to be unable to conceive of alternative courses (Mumford and Gustafson 1988). A legislative thinking style is required, or a preference for thinking in novel ways of one’s own choosing. It also helps to be able to think globally as well as locally, and to be able to recognize which questions are important and which are not (Sternberg and Lubart 1996).

People who are confident of their abilities are more likely to innovate in the workplace. Researchers have found that confidence and motivation to develop knowledge and skills predicted innovation following job change. Innovative people also tend to be self-disciplined in matters concerning work, with a high degree of drive and motivation, and a concern with achieving excellence (Mumford and Gustafson 1988). This perseverance against social pressures presumably reduces the dangers of premature abandonment. Minority influence theory in social psychology suggests that this perseverance acts to bring about change in the views of majorities, and is a necessary behavioral style among innovators (see Nemeth 1986).

Tolerance of ambiguity, widely associated with creativity, enables individuals to avoid the problems of following only mental ruts, and increases the chances of unusual responses and the discovery of novelty (Barron and Harrington 1981).

Innovative people tend to be self-directed, enjoying and requiring freedom in their work (Mumford and Gustafson 1988). They have a high need for freedom, control, and discretion in the workplace and appear to find bureaucratic limitations or the exercise of control by managers frustrating. Such people need clear work objectives along with high autonomy to perform well in work.

1.2 Work Environments

Creative cognitions occur when individuals feel free from pressure, safe, and positive (Claxton 1997). Experimental manipulations of stress levels in experiments have shown that higher levels of stress lead to greater reliance on habitual solutions. Moreover, psychological threats to face or identity are also associated with more rigid thinking, and time pressure increases rigidity of thinking on work-related tasks such as selection decisions. Speculation (a critical creative process) makes people in work settings feel vulnerable because they often tend to experience their workplaces as unsafe. Questioning the person who comes up with an idea too closely, joking about the proposal (even in a light way), or simply ignoring the proposal, can lead to the person feeling defensive.

The characteristics of work tasks also impact upon people’s creativity. Oldham and Cummings (1996) found that the following five job characteristics predicted levels of individual innovation at work: skill variety and challenge, task identity, task significance, autonomy task feedback.

Skill variety refers to the degree to which a job requires different activities in order for the work to be carried out and the degree to which the range of skills and talents of the person working within the role is used. Thus a nurse working with the elderly in their homes may need to use the professional skills of dressing wounds, listening, counseling, being empathic, and appraising the supports and dangers in the person’s home.

Task identity is the degree to which the job represents a whole piece of work. It is not simply adding a rubber band to the packaging of a product, but being involved in the manufacture of the product throughout the process, or at least in a meaningful part of the process.

Significance of the task in terms of its impact upon other people within the organization, or in the world at large, has an influence on creativity. Monitoring the effectiveness of an organization’s debt collection is less significant than addressing the well-being of elderly people in rural settings, and may therefore evoke less creativity.

Autonomy refers to the freedom, independence, and discretion for the people performing tasks, in deter-mining how to do their work and when to do it. Their level of autonomy directly determines the extent to which people are creative and innovative in their work.

When people receive feedback on their performance they are more likely to become aware of the ‘performance gaps.’ Consequently they are more attuned to the need to initiate new ways of working in order to fill the gaps. Of course this also implies that they have clear job objectives.

While some theories of creativity and flow suggest that creative work is primarily sustained by intrinsic motivation (Amabile 1988), emerging research evidence suggests that extrinsic rewards can complement intrinsic motivation. Rewards appear to be counter-productive only if they serve to displace attention from the task toward the reward. Despite much popular belief to the contrary, there is considerable evidence that extrinsic rewards encourage both creativity and innovation implementation.

Human beings minimize effort in their activities and therefore some external stimulus is necessary to prompt the extra effort required to innovate. Andrews (1979) found that moderate time pressure was generally associated with higher creativity amongst R and D scientists. Many studies have shown that work demands explained more of the variance in innovation than any other work role factor. Necessity may well be the mother of invention.

Job security is a positive predictor of innovation. People on short-term contracts are much less likely to innovate than those with longer tenure. At the same time, however, job tenure is often a negative predictor. In other words, the longer people are in their jobs, the less likely they are to innovate. Paradoxically, organizational tenure seems to be a positive predictor. Research suggests that job insecurity reduces the motivation to innovate. However, the longer people stay in the same job within the organization the less they innovate.

1.3 Work Group Or Team Innovation

Group or team innovation occurs when a diverse group (in terms of task relevant knowledge, skills and abilities) experiences both high external demands and high levels of internal integration and psychosocial safety (and this may largely be determined by the knowledge skills and abilities members have for working in teams). Put succinctly, creativity requires safety, while innovation implementation requires high demands (whether in the form of threat or large reward). Groups will be creative primarily when their task is sufficiently interesting, motivating, and challenging and when the group’s internal environment or processes are experienced as safe. Diversity is necessary to ensure there is sufficient difference and richness of input to encourage creative and innovative outputs (Mumford and Gustafson 1988).

Research on climates for innovation in teams has revealed the importance of shared objectives in teams, high levels of participation (information-sharing, shared influence over decision making and interaction), an orientation to excellent task performance, and support for innovation.

West and Anderson (1996) also found that these team climate factors predicted levels of innovativeness over a six-month period, in top management teams in 27 hospitals—innovation was monitored via tape recordings of team meetings, interviews with team members, and study of the minutes of team meetings (see also the seminal UNESCO studies reported in Andrews 1979). Moreover the proportion of innovators in the team (members scoring high on a measure of innovativeness) predicted the radicalness (changes to status quo) of innovations they introduced into the hospitals.

Of course, one of the implications is that organizations need to encourage teams by focusing not just on productivity, but also on creativity and innovation as important performance outcomes. Research examining the climate of UK university departments over an eight-year period showed that external ratings of performance, based on quantitative measures of scientific productivity and excellence, led members of those departments to report an increase in the perceived effectiveness of those departments. But they also reported that their departments became more formalized (more rules and regulations) while levels of participation in decision making and support for innovation declined. These are precisely the conditions under which innovation and creativity will also decline.

A key indicator of innovation in work groups is reflexivity. Team reflexivity is the extent to which team members collectively reflect upon the team’s objectives, strategies, and processes as well as their wider organizations, and adapt them accordingly. There are three central elements to reflexivity: reflection, planning, and action or adaptation:

(a) Reflection consists of attention, awareness, monitoring, and evaluation of the object of reflection.

(b) High reflexivity exists when team planning is characterized by greater detail, inclusiveness of potential problems, hierarchical ordering of plans, and long-range as well as short-range planning. The greater the details of implementation intentions or plans, the greater the likelihood that they will manifest in innovation.

(c) Action refers to goal-directed behaviors relevant to achieving the desired changes in team objectives, strategies, processes, organizations, or environments.

As a consequence of reflexivity, the team’s reality is continually renegotiated during team interaction. Understandings negotiated in one exchange between team members may be drawn upon in a variety of ways in order to inform subsequent discussions and offer the possibility of helpful and creative transformations in meanings as well as the development of shared mental models.

Leadership is also important to team performance and creativity. For example, research reveals that chief executive officers’ ages, flexibility, and perseverance are all positively related to the adoption of technological innovation in their organizations. How the leader manages team meetings can influence group processes—directive chairs inhibit teams from achieving shared mental models and inhibit innovation by restricting the multiplicity of interactions in free-flowing teams. Recent theories of leadership depict two dominant styles: transformational and transactional. Transactional leaders focus on transactions, exchanges, contingent rewards and punishments to change team members’ behavior. Transformational leaders influence group members by encouraging them to transform their views of themselves and their work. They rely on charisma and the ability to conjure inspiring visions of the future. Evidence suggests that it is transformational leaders who have most influence on consensus decision-making processes, and thereby innovation.

Dissent is a potential stimulus for group innovation when it occurs in a cooperative context. Minority influence theory provides an understanding of how dissent and minority influence intragroup processes lead to creativity and innovation (Nemeth and Owens 1996). It implies that individuals in small groups can bring about change in the views of the majority through being consistent and persistent. It suggests that minorities and dissenting views in organizations should be tolerated, and also encouraged, in order to develop seedbeds for innovation and creativity. By drawing upon this area of theory and research, powerful conceptual insights into innovation implementation strategies can be developed.

2. Organizational Innovation

2.1 Organizational Climate

Organizations create an ethos or atmosphere within which creativity is either nurtured and blooms in innovation, or is starved of support. Psychological research has revealed that supportive and challenging environments are likely to sustain high levels of creativity (Mumford and Gustafson 1988), especially those that encourage risk taking and idea generation (Kanter 1983). Employees frequently have ideas for improving their workplaces, work functioning, processes, products, or services. Where climates are characterized by distrust, lack of communication, personal antipathies, limited individual autonomy, and unclear goals, the implementation of these ideas is inhibited (Amabile 1988).

2.2 Organizational Structure

The greater the complexity and more differentiated the organization (in terms of departments, groupings, etc.) the easier it is to cross boundaries and the greater the number of sources from which innovation can spring. Yet, as organizations become more complex, senior managers tend to increase formalization and control systems and this constrains innovation (Kanter 1983, Van de Ven et al. 1989).

Companies operating in uncertain environments will require flexible, decentralized, and informal work practices (organic rather than mechanistic forms of organizing) in order to respond effectively through innovation. Collaborative idea development across an organization is often cited as a precondition for organizational innovation (Kanter 1983, Zaltman et al. 1973). There is support for the notion that high centralization is a negative predictor of innovation (Burns and Stalker 1961), and Lawrence and Lorsch’s (1967) case studies showed that tightly coupled inter-departmental relationships fostered new product development in organizations. However, research also suggests that centralization may also be necessary to ensure innovation implementation. Zaltman et al. (1973) call this the innovation dilemma. Decentralization at local level is necessary for creative ideas to be developed but centralization may be required for the effective implementation of those ideas in the wider organization. The failure of many organizations to innovate may be a consequence of a failure to recognize this inherent tension.

The resolution of the dilemma may be team-based organizations. Teams provide the sources for ideas (especially cross-functional teams) while the team-based organization also offers simultaneously centralized and distributed decision-making structures that enable successful innovation. Indeed, the extent of team-based working in organizations appears to be a good predictor of innovation.

2.3 Organizational Size And Age

Large organizations have difficulty changing their forms to fit changing environments. Yet organizational size has been a positive predictor of both technological and administrative innovations. Innovative agility is more a characteristic of smaller organizations (Rogers 1983). Size may be a surrogate measure of several dimensions associated with innovation such as resources and economies of scale. However, in large organizations, decentralization and specialization are not sufficient to ensure innovation. Integration across groups, departments, specialisms, is also necessary for communication and sharing of disseminated knowledge, and this requires some centralization or else the sophisticated development of team-based structures. More recent research, examining all 35 US firms that produced microprocessors between 1971 and 1989, showed that smaller organizations were more likely to be the sources of innovation.

The longer human social organizations endure, the more embedded become their norms and the more resilient to change become their traditions. Consequently, mature organizations will have more difficulty innovating and adapting. Evidence from both UK and US studies suggests that younger organizations (years since start up) are likely to innovate in products, production technology, production processes, work organization, and people management.

2.4 Market Environment And Uncertainty

Low market share predicts higher levels of product innovation while environmental uncertainly predicts administrative innovation (innovation in work organization and people management systems). These findings point to the importance of external threat or demand in stimulating innovation in organizations.

2.5 Management Of Quality

The philosophy of continuous improvement embodies a central commitment to innovation. A wide variety of methods and techniques are deployed by total quality management (TQM) adherents, including improvements in product and manufacturing design, upgraded technology, responsibility for quality at the point of production, statistical process control, and the development of a production culture based on continuous improvement in both products and processes. The more sophisticated and pervasive the management of quality, the more innovative organizations tend to be.

2.6 Support For Innovation

Organizations must provide appropriate resources for creative efforts and encourage independent action in order to facilitate the implementation of the creative ideas of those who work within them. There are generally positive and strong correlations between R and D expenditure in organizations and innovation.

Companies use a wide range of schemes to support innovation, and the need for such practical schemes to stimulate, support, and ensure the implementation of innovation is clear. Many organizations include a commitment to innovation in their philosophies, but the practical realization of their commitments is poor. The tendencies to inertia in organizations and resistance to change require clear, practical, and effective strategies to promote innovation.

A central contextual factor for encouraging innovation is reward for innovation implementation. Out-comes like money, fringe benefits, public recognition, and preferred work assignments are likely to lead to innovation implementation.

2.7 Networks And Alliances

Increasingly researchers are examining the relation-ships between organizations (e.g., between suppliers and customers and in joint ventures) and this research suggests that such alliances are an important source of innovation. However, mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures by organizations are associated with lower levels of innovation, probably because managers divert attention and resources away from innovation in order to manage structural changes.

3. Conclusions

Findings across a range of levels and sectors make it clear that innovation only occurs where there is strong practical and cultural support for efforts to introduce new and improved products and procedures. At the same time, opportunities to develop and implement skills in the workplace and to innovate are central to the satisfaction of people at work (Nicholson and West 1988), while innovation is vital to the effectiveness of organizations in highly demanding and competitive environments.

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