Selecting and developing organizational routines to support innovation
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Creating conditions conducive to innovation requires companies to consider a broad range of aspects and not the least identifying and implementing new processes and routines. The purpose of this paper is to address what innovation routines are selected and developed in a company with the ambition to involve a broad base of its employees in innovation. It investigates the similarities and differences of organizational routines selected in four different units in a large global R&D organization and analyses reasons to and consequences of these differences. The study shows that how innovation is regarded in an organization will play an important role, that addressing innovation as a process is critical and that the conflicts emerging when people strive to create new routines that largely deviate from normal operations can become a valuable source for innovation capabilities. By combining innovation management research with recent organizational routines literature this paper is able to identify some interesting patterns both when it comes to how innovation routines are selected and developed and when it comes to what routine characteristics can be more or less effectively combined to support innovation. The study aims to contribute to the emerging literature exploring intra-organizational evolution of ideas and routines.
Authors: Susanne Nilsson, Sofia Ritzén
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W256346729