Factors affect for Innovation Essay PDF

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Essay describes the factors that affects the Innovation ...

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Theories related to the factors influencing organizational creativity, innovation & corporate entrepreneurship According to Andriopoulos (2001), there are five factors that have an influence on organization creativity, innovation & entrepreneurial behavior which can be recognized as follows. The organizational climate, leadership style, organizational culture, resources and skills, and the structure and systems of organization.

These factors can be either positively or negatively related to the organization performance. How above mentioned factors has influenced the organization is described below. Factors positively Affecting Employees’ Creative & Innovative Behavior on the Organizational Level The organizational climate is related to the atmosphere or feeling in the environment, where expression, participation, and creativity can be boosted. To create this climate, interaction barriers should be lowered, stimuli should be increased, the experiment should be encouraged, and building on early ideas should be allowed.

A democratic and participative leadership style is known to boost creativity. The leader’s vision is important for management, while effective communication through both formal and informal channels is also a key factor. What’s more, constant employee encouragement and conveying vision from the highest level to the lowest are also needed for managing creative individuals. In addition, leaders should be able to form effective workgroups, which involves trusting individuals from diverse backgrounds. The term “Organizational Culture” refers to the deepest level of basic values, assumptions, and beliefs in a group. Those values are shared by all its members and are shown by the rites, language used, stories, legends and myths shared by all members. An environment of innovative and supportive people best encourages creativity. To create this environment, principles that everyone accepts should be set and a culture that encourages risk-taking should be developed. Moreover, individuals and teams with high autonomy can foster creativity. “Resources and Skills” here emphasizes human resources. It is obvious that if organizations want to keep creative, they should hire people who are creative in their thinking processes. The managers of organizations also have to offer sufficient resources and training to boost creativity. Money and time are both key factors that should be provided to employees; this is discussed in the previous article “Sources of Creativity”. “Structure and Systems” refers to both the formal and the informal processes within the company. The structure and systems truly enhance creativity & innovation when the organization wholeheartedly gives its support. To motivate creativity the structure of the organization should be flat to allow decisions at all levels, while evaluation should be supportive and informative According to( Robbins, Judge, & Breward, 2003)If an organization follows an innovation strategy, the organizational structure must be organic. It requires losing structure, low formalization, low specialization, and more decentralization. Mercy Corps maintained a nimble, decentralized organization structure that crafted innovative solutions to a diverse range of local problems.company was able to respond quickly to changing conditions without getting approval for every decision from headquarters more effectively.

With the expansion resulting to company to operate in large scale in the recent time period now company is struggling to maitaintain the creativity in the same phase. Country directors seems to lack in understanding on decision making within large complex structure and in confusioon with the role ambiguity on who needs to take the responsibility & final call on the projects whether its head officeor specific country seems to Detroit the creativity and innvoation nature of the company.

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Conceptual model Perhaps one of the most well-known works that links creativity and innova- tion to various dimensions in the organization is the conceptual model of Amabile and colleague (1996). This model is based on the Componential Model of Organizational Innovation (Amabile, 1988). The Componential Model considers three major components of individual (or small team) crea- tivity, each of which is necessary for creativity in any given domain: expertise, creative-thinking skill, and intrinsic task motivation. The Componential Model also describes work characteristics that influence individual creativity; organ- izational motivation to innovate; resources; and management practices. The conceptual model (Amabile et al., 1996), which is a further development, con-

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[ CHAPTER 2 ]

siders more organizational aspects and consists of five conceptual categories that influence creativity and innovation in the organization. The conceptual model states that for the organization to be creative and inno- vative, the individuals need to perceive high levels of organizational encourage- ment in the form of support from supervisors and colleagues, risk taking, and a collaborative environment among others. When people perceive they have freedom in making the choice in how to do their work along with a sense of having control over one’s work, they also produce more creative work. Ac- cording to Amabile and colleagues (1996) resources are directly related to crea- tive outcomes. Not only a lack of resources does impede people in their effort to be creative and accomplish their work, but it can also influence employees psychologically in the sense that they experience that their work is not valued. Furthermore, Amabile and colleagues (1996) talk about two types of pressures; excessive workload pressure and challenge. When the pressure arises from the intellectually challenging nature of the problem it can enhance creativity. Ex- cessive workload that involves a time constraint has been negatively related to creativity. The last conceptual category in the model is impediments which con- tain factors such as internal strife, conservatism, and rigid formal management structures that are thought to impede creativity and decrease the intrinsic motivation of employees to be creative. According to Amabile and colleagues (1996), these conceptual categories are related to the creative outcome of an organization. They conclude that people produce more creative work when they experience high levels of support and encouragement, freedom, resources, less overload and more challenge, and fewer impediments. The perceptions of the employees are regarded as of utter importance and as influencing the creative level in the organization (Amabile, et al., 1996).

The most important premise of this theory is that work environments impact creativity by affecting components that contribute to creativity which represent a basic source for organizational innovation (Amabile, 1997). There are three major components contributing to individual or small team creativity: expertise, creative-thinking skill, and intrinsic motivation. In contrast, the main components of the wider work environment that influence employee creativity are organizational motivation to innovate, resources (including finances, time availability, and personnel resources), and managerial practices, such as enabling challenging work and supervisory encouragement (Amabile, 1997; Amabile & Conti, 1999). This model has received some empirical support in terms of the role of its motivation component as a psychological mechanism underlying influences from the work environment on employees’ creativity, though the other components have not received as much research attention as the motivation component (Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham 2004; Zhou & Shalley, 2010).

Factors positively Affecting Employees’ Creative & Innovative Behavior on the Organizational Level CDs enjoyed considerable autonomy in designing and managing their country programs and operations. As a result, programs across Mercy Corps’ countries spanned a variety of sectors, including emergency relief, health, agriculture and food security, community and institutional capacity-building, sustainable economic development, and microfinance

field driven decentralized organization structure Innovative culture our best ideas come from our field staff because they work in close partnership with the communities we serve, so we encourage the field to take risks and we follow their lead LEADERSHIP

Organizational Innovation Atmosphere The organizational innovation atmosphere is defined by Amabile (1996) as the perception description that the degree of supporting for creativity and innovation felt by members of the organization on the work environment [14]. It reflects the perception of the individual about whether the organization provide environment which is conducive learning and innovation, and its degree. And it’s the system reflection of individual and environment, determining innovation level of the individual and the organization (Tao Yongmei, 2012) [8]. Organizational in- novation atmosphere including the concept of advocacy, market guidance, evaluation and incentive, training, communication and cooperation, resource guarantee, model, authorization (Ma Yueting, 2009) [15], will directly affect the employee’s innovative behavior, capability and performance organization though attitudes, beliefs, motivations and values of members of the organization. Psychological capital plays an intermediary role in the relationship between the organizational innovation atmosphere and employee innovative behavior (Zhen Mei- rong, et al., 2012) [16]. Lian Xins’ (2013) empirical research shows that organizational innovation atmosphere has a direct effect on individual innovative behavior [17].

Leadership Employees’ innovative behaviors depend on not only the cognitive style, intrinsic motivation, psychological capital, but also the effective stimulation from the external environment, especially the leadership and motiva- tion (Mumford, et al., 2002). Communication is the main way that leaders transfer the management concept to the employees and effects employees’ behavior, which is more useful than other forms of communication (Wang Yongyue, 2014) [18]. Leadership improves employees’ innovative behavior through direct encouragement or setting the goal of innovation for employees, (Wang Duanxu, et al., 2010) [19]; and also can rapidly capture the subordinates emotional information, do evaluation and praise, to show their support and admiration for em- ployees’ innovation.

4.3.

Social Capital

Madjar (2005) believes that creativity is not the results of organizational members’ independent thinking, but produces in the frequently interaction process between members [20]. Interaction may promote emotional reci- procity and trust between the members which is not only conducive

for employees to share learning experience and technology knowledge, but also broaden field of vision, promote new ideas, and generate new ideas (Yang & Chen, 2005) [21]. Lin Zifen (2013) also believes the employees who are willing to share knowledge with oth- ers will increase their knowledge reserve and more likely produce the innovation behavior [22]. The relationship between the customers and employees also will have an impact on the employees’ innovative behavior. The communication with customers, on one hand, can make the employees understand the different characteristics, needs and service development trend more easily. On the other hand, it can improve their stock of knowledge and develop creative thinking, promote greater employee’s innovative behavior.

4.4.

Work Characteristics

Employees’ innovative behavior is also related with employees’ work experience and job characteristics. First of

all, the related working experience would influence employees’ innovative behavior. Employees who are famili- ar with the tasks would easily find working tips, overcome the fear of innovation failure, and be more confident when innovating (Ericsson, et al., 1993). Secondly, because of the need to break formulary thinking in the com- plex work, employees have to learn and solve the new arising problems continuously, so that they would have the profound sense of innovation and high level innovative skills. Thirdly, the working routine degree would in- fluent employee innovative behavior. At the high rates of routine and repetition, employees who often work according to the rules would form a solidified thought, and their innovation intention is very low and very difficult

critical appreciation of organizational barriers to creativity and innovation company is growing too fast and have no capacity for cater big projects When I started as Mercy Corps’ chief operating officer back in 1997, I knew all of the CDs,” Zimmerman recalled. “Now that we’ve grown and hired more people from outside the agency, I’m meeting some CDs for the first time.” Indeed, Mercy Corps had hired 37% of its CDs in the previous three years.

“Each RPD brings his/her own management and leadership style. They are working in very different regional contexts and their CDs have diverse needs.”

demand for the TSU is far outstripping our capacity,” assessed Farrell. “My people are getting burned out flying all around the world, and they are not able to get to know any one country well enough to provide the kind of specialized technical assistance they need. We’ve either got to keep growing TSU or find a new way of working,” said Farrell. This was the topic of Farrell’s session at the Nepal Leadership con“The challenge is how do we ensure that we have highquality technical experts who are well- versed in the regional contexts and able to design innovative new programs—and how can we do so without adding one new core-funded technical support position in each of the ference without effective operations support

critically evaluate organizational support for creativity and innovation...