Essays on the Management of Employee Innovativeness
This dissertation explores the determinants of employee innovativeness in a more dynamic context. Thereby, it examines how to organize innovation management to enhance employees’ 1) engagement in idea generation and 2) acceptance of innovation implementation. The focus is on employees in established organizations, which are often characterized by structural inertia and resistance to change. Empirical evidence is gathered from extensive fieldwork, including field experiments, both two-wave and cross-sectional survey data, as well as objective platform data, qualitative interview data, and ethnographic research. The findings, presented in five research articles, reveal the determinants of employee innovativeness at both individual and collective levels. They highlight the importance for organizations and their leaders to develop and integrate the capabilities necessary to manage the social and informal aspects of innovation. Specifically, (1) clear vision communication is critical for effectively managing uncertainty at the front end of innovation, and the effectiveness of mid-level and lower-level visionary leaders in inspiring employees’ idea generation depends on alignment with the organizational vision, for instance, communicated by upper management; (2) to enhance employee innovativeness, established organizations are adopting new innovation practices that deviate from existing routines and collective norms. Therefore, these practices must be fully integrated into an overall innovation management system to gain legitimacy; (3) frontline employees in established service organizations are less likely to accept more radical innovations, and this resistance can be strongly altered by collective processes at the workgroup and organizational levels.
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