Why do employees participate in innovation?

 

2021 – There is a recent and growing literature on the consequences of the ongoing technological transformation on skills. Most of the time it views technological progress as an exogenous shock that impacts the relative demands for labour with different skills. This chapter takes as a starting point that the technological transformation is the results of organisational choices. Hence it reviews a literature relating to what is going on upstream rather than downstream in the innovation process. In particular, it addresses how organisations take advantage of new technological opportunities to reform their designs, how they create work environments that favour innovative work behaviour and why employees engage their resources by participating to innovation.

Table of content

1 Introduction

2. Organisational transformation in the digital era.

2.1 Digital technologies and organisational structures

2.1.1 Productive complementarities and decentralized forms of work

2.1.2 Ambiguous trend towards decentralized structures

2.2 Digital technologies and working styles

2.2.1 Employee empowerment and digital working styles

2.2.2 A paradoxical trend in autonomy

3. Adaptive organizational form and innovative work behaviour

3.1 Trade-offs in the design of adaptive organisational forms

3.1.1 Ambidextrous organisational designs

3.1.2 Digitization as a game changer for the design of adaptive organisational forms?

3.2 Managing the participation constraint to organisational change and innovation

3.2.1 Sustainable and meaningful organisational change

3.2.2 Workplace innovation and innovative work behaviour

Bibliographie

 

Reference

Nathalie Greenan, Silvia Napolitano: ‘Why do employees participate in innovation?

Skills and organisational design issues and the ongoing technological Transformation.’

Document de travail W 206, le cnam ceet.fr Juin 2021