How Organizations Can Develop Their Innovation Management Capabilities

Innovation may be linked to positive changes in efficiency, productivity, quality and competitiveness, among other factors. Benefits of innovation could be the improvement in the workforce. By improving the workforce an organisation will benefit from increased productivity and improved morale and lower staff turnover. Employees will feel more valued which therefore increases motivation. This is beneficial to employers because it provides the organisation with knowledgeable, reliable staff who will have a more positive contribution to the needs of the organisation. Staff are a valuable source of innovation, even if it is not expected as a major part of their job. An innovative work environment means being creative and try new techniques. As Albert Einstein said “if you always do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always got.”

According to researcher Lindner (1998), motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces to aid in the survival of organizations. Not only is it important to meet the needs of the consumer, it is equally important that to make sure that associates are taken care of and remain motivated. For this reason, Gibson, Ivancevich, Donnelly and Konopaske (2012) “states much of management’s time is spent addressing the motivation of their employees” (p. 125). According to the Encyclopedia of Small Business (2007), employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity employees bring to their jobs; the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals (Lindner, 1988). Despite its obvious importance, employee motivation can be an elusive quest for managers due to the multiplicity of incentives that can influence employees to do their best work. The reality is that every employee has different ways to become motivated and the knowledge of how to motivate them is key to organizational success. It is imperative that employers get to know the personal needs and wants of their employees in order to establish tactics in which to motivate each of them. Once achieved, “managers are in a better position to encourage and reward employees to behave in effective ways” (Gibson et al, 2012, p.

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, the ability to transform obstacles into opportunities can be a firm’s biggest advantage (Samašonok & Leškienė, 2015). As organizations recognize the need to be adaptable, creativity in the workplace has become one of the most important determinants of performance and success (Anderson, Potočnik & Zhou, 2014). To date, even though creativity has been linked to firm performance and survival (Nystrom, 1990), many managers admit that employees have “room to improve” in terms of creativity (Shalley, 2004).

The environment of an individual including culture of the company, management style, level of stress at work, etc…are also very important factors.

B. the reduction in the amount of inventory needed by manufacturing firms due to technological improvements in inventory management.

Job Design is one of the structural variables in organization management and a rich source of intrinsic rewards, which is the reward that comes from job content as opposed to job context. Intrinsic rewards from Job content motivates and produces behaviours that

Employees are motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. In order for the reward system to be effective, it must encompass both sources of motivation. Studies have found that among employees surveyed, money was not the most important motivator, and in some instances managers have found money to have a de-motivating or negative effect on employees.  This research paper addresses the definition of rewards in the work environment context, the importance of rewarding employees for their job performance, motivators to employee performance such as extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, Herzberg’s two-factor theory in relation to rewarding employees, Hackman and Oldman model of job enrichment that

The success of any business depends on the productivity and satisfaction of its employees. Employees need to be motivated to work. Motivation can be defined as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. For an individual to be motivated in a work situation there must be a need, which the individual would have to perceive a possibility of satisfying through some reward. Intrinsic motivation stems from motivations that are inherent and arise from performing the task of the job itself, which the individual gets a feeling of either positive or negative motivation as a result of

There are very many factors that motivate employees to do outstanding work in their jobs. Though most of them are non-monetary factors like participative decision making, work teams, challenging jobs, goals in life or in the company, power and other factors. Most of the employees that emerge in their workplace, either in a small cubicle or a mega office have got some drive that enable them to perform in their work, but the key question is, is money is the key motivation in their workplace? In this essay both sides will be argued in order to find the answer to this (Robbins, Odendaal & Roodt, 2003).

Motivation in the workplace is one of the major concerns that managers face when trying to encourage their employees to work harder and do what is expected of them on a day-to-day basis. According to Organizational Behavior by John R. Schermerhorn, James G. Hunt and Richard N. Osborn the definition of motivation is "the individual forces that account for the direction, level, and persistence of a person's effort expended at work." They go on to say that "motivation is a key concern in firms across the globe." Through the years there have been several theories as to what motivates employees to do their best at work. In order to better understand these theories we will apply them to a fictitious organization that has the following

Sánchez, A., Lago, A., Ferràs, X., & Ribera, J (2011) Innovation Management Practices, Strategic Adaptation, and Business Results: Evidence from the Electronics Industry. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation; 2011, Vol. 6 Issue 2, p14-39. Retrieved from Ebscohost

Having the right organizational culture is probably the most important factor that should preoccupy an organization and its top leadership. In this age of globalization, innovation makes the difference between companies that emerge successful in the marketplace and those that end up winding up operations due to unsustainability (Barbosa, 2014, p. 38). It is common knowledge in the corporate world that innovation thrives in the right organizational culture; one that promotes and fosters creativity of individual workers.

One of the first authors that dealt with the sources of motivation was Frederick Taylor who focussed on the overall productivity of an organisation. He linked this productivity to the effort an employee puts into their work which in turn is dependent on monetary rewards (Taylor, 1911). This theory was established in the context of the industrial age and thus is outdated for today’s analysis but it still provides a basic assumption which is often referred to by other authors. The total neglecting of a worker’s intrinsic motivators is a starting point for discussion for authors that conducted research in that area after Taylor.

In today’s knowledge-based economy, innovation has become the principal source of competitive advantages in global business; the success of firms now depends more on their intelligence capability – such as employee creativity – than traditional material assets (Amabile et al., as cited in Zhou, Zhang & Montoro-Sa ́nchez, 2011). The creative capability of individual and collective knowledge workers is the fuel that powers innovation in firms. While creativity leads to the production of new and useful ideas in any domain, innovation is the successful implementation of those creative ideas within an organisation (McLean, as cited in Zhou, Zhang & Montoro-Sa ́nchez 2011). In highly dynamic business environments innovation and creativity have become crucial for creating competitive advantages for the

Ever since businesses have been created, employers have tried every means necessary to increase the productivity of their subordinates. Since the beginning of time, this was done by a reward-punishment type philosophy. This philosophy is used when regarding the workplace. If a worker does well, he/she is rewarded by a pay raise and if the worker is not performing up to standards they are let go. In Dan Pink’s “The Puzzle of Motivation” he finds a flaw in this philosophy, and this flaw is supported by his thesis “There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does”. The translation of this thesis is that it has been proven, by science, that incentives don’t always increase work productivity; in fact, it decreases it in some cases. However, most businesses