Commitment to Innovation

“The management of innovation is inherently difficult and risky, most new technologies fail to be translated into products and services, and most new products and services are not commercial successes. In short, innovation can enhance competitiveness, but it requires a different set of management knowledge and skills from those of everyday business administration” (Bessant et al. 2005 p. 1). The above states clearly that the premise of an innovative organization lies in the fact that there is a need for changing the way of managing knowledge within a company, something that is beyond regular way of doing administrative tasks. Due to the complexity nature of innovative firms, organizational settings are highly important for employees to commit themselves to innovative tasks. Since innovative firms’ core competences lie in their ability to innovate, being good at it means competitive advantage. Although the above can be seen as a taken for granted concept that many firms are striving or claiming to possess, the most crucial part is to get the employees voluntarily involved in innovating. According to Starkey (1996) the key to the innovation process is personal commitment, the employees’ sense of identity with the enterprise and its mission. This is in line with Dissel, Harner, Janssen, Lugt, Moultrie and Nilsson (2007) who claim that one way for organizations to become more innovative is to capitalize on their employees’ ability to innovate. The authors stress the importance of addressing the influence of leaders on employee’s innovative behaviors. This has shown to be a challenge. Although innovation is increasingly seen as a powerful concept, a way of securing competitive advantage and also an approach to defend strategic positions, there is absolutely no means of to a guaranteed success due to the uncertain nature of innovation. This is further supported by Bessant et al. (2005) who claims that there is no clear best practice to make the employees genuinely committed to innovate, what seems to be a success in one occasion may well be a failure in another occasion. The author also states that it is a matter of management issue, that is to say the managers’ task to make choices about what resources to use, their disposition as well as how these are coordinated in order to foster the innovation spirit in the organization. For instance, Hennessey and Amabile (1998) claim that understanding of individual strengths and weaknesses and working relationships that are founded upon sensitivity and trust have been shown to enhance creativity and problem-solving capability. On the other hand Bessant et al. (2005) claim that real success to innovation lies in being able to repeat the trick of success, in other words manage the process consistently so that success, whilst not ever guaranteed, is more likely to happen. This is to say to try to minimize the portion of chance and instead manage sources that make people committed to be more innovative. Hartog and Jong (2007) state that to initiate innovations, employees can generate ideas by engaging in behaviors to explore opportunities identify performance gaps or produce solutions for problems. Since the opportunities are based upon incongruities and discontinuities, that is to say things are not ‐ 8 ‐ fit to a secured known pattern, unfulfilled need of the customers or indications that need can be changed in the future, in the actual implementation phase the employee can play a crucial role in showing application oriented behavior. But, in order to be able to initiate this mindset, the manager needs to play its role right. Starkey (1996), claims that formal organizational arrangements provide structures, systems and procedures which direct and motivate behaviors to innovate. Also the facts that if companies are willing to let its employees freely explore new paths of doing things, this risk taking spirit is a premise to fostering innovation. Hartog and Jong (2007)