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Promoting innovation: a change study.

Article Excerpt
Releasing the innovative potential of employees is considered integral to the success of modern organizations (Amabile, 1988; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). Indeed, the aim of many initiatives, such as team-working and organizational learning, is to facilitate employee innovation (McLoughlin & Harris, 1997). Yet no previous study has considered how such initiatives affect the process of employee innovation over time. We examine this through a longitudinal extension of a previous cross-sectional study on employee innovation within teams (Axtell et al., 2000).

The focus of the team-work initiative in this study was primarily on increasing employees' control and encouraging them to suggest and implement changes to the way things were done in their work areas. Ideas could be raised at any time but were mostly gathered during specific meetings. Employees generally developed small-scale and non-radical innovations such as job rotation or modifications to quality recording sheets, although some were able to participate in larger projects such as designing waste reduction systems.

Axtell and colleagues (2000) collected their data a few months after the introduction of team-working. They found that although suggestion making among shop-floor employees was linked principally to individual and job factors, the implementation of suggestions was more closely associated with group and organizational factors. For example, employees were more likely to make suggestions when they reported greater role-breadth self-efficacy (RBSE; confidence in performing broad, proactive roles; Parker, 1998) and had enriched jobs with greater personal control; but they were more likely to get their suggestions implemented where they experienced greater support for innovation from their peers and from management. The rationale offered for this pattern of results was that whilst a person can be creative and generate new ideas alone (where more proximal individual and job factors are likely to be most influential), the implementation of ideas usually requires the involvement of others (Van de Ven, Angle, & Poole, 1989).

A limitation of the above study is that it only provides a cross-sectional snapshot of possible determinants of innovation at an early stage in the development of team-work. This can give a misleading picture, as the literature suggests that organizational initiatives go through various phases in which different factors predict success. For instance, Parker and Jackson's (1993) study of team-working revealed that the move from a passive culture to one of employee ownership and involvement required a lot of support from management initially before employees started to use their initiative and make their own decisions. Thus, although employee jobs were enriched, they did not exercise their job control straight away. This is consistent with many team development models that suggest that, initially, team members are leader-focused due to the uncertainty of the new situation, but seek independence from the leader as the group matures (Chang, Bordia, & Duck, 2003). Moreover, as described in many change models, direct management involvement may eventually decrease as responsibility for the initiative is devolved to the local level and becomes a requirement for all employees (Caldwell, 2003). Thus, as the team matures and reliance on management reduces, team support for the initiative and local regulation is likely to play an increasing role in...

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