From mechanistic measuring to up-to-date understanding : Problematising the study of innovative work behaviour

Innovation is vital for the survival of organisations. Individual employees are the microfoundations of organisational innovation since it is the individuals who generate new ideas and implement solutions. Individual innovation processes are often studied using the term innovative work behaviour (IWB). The topic is explored in a hermeneutic circle in which answers are sought to whether managerial coaching can enhance IWB; how IWB has been understood and measured; and whether the individual innovation process is similar to how previous literature has conceived it. The overall aim of the thesis is to increase understanding of the individual innovation process and how it should be approached in research and in modern working life. Three data sets are utilised in the quest for answers. 4418 responses from employees in Finnish SMEs comprise the quantitative data set. An article cache of 255 articles is analysed in the integrative literature review. 34 semi-structured interviews at a Finnish MNC make up a single case study. The mixed-methods approach allows for a multifaceted understanding of the phenomenon studied. The thesis makes several important contributions. It highlights that the practice of studying individual innovation processes under the term innovative work behaviour is problematic, and explains reasons for this. It finds that the individual innovation process was last studied in the 1980s and that the measuring instruments used even today are based on these studies. The thesis suggests that the individual innovation process is different today than it was in the 1980s, both in consisting of different activities than before, and in the role of the individual being more active and engaged. In all, the study of IWB has focused on the mechanistic measuring of the effects of various determinants to behaviours using outdated measuring instruments instead of attempting to understand the microfoundations of innovation. The thesis builds new understanding of the individual innovation process and offers focal points for supporting an individual’s innovation efforts in organisations.Innovaatiot ovat elintärkeitä yritysten selviytymiselle. Yksittäiset työntekijät, jotka luovat ja implementoivat uusia ideoita, ovat organisaatiotason innovaatioiden ja innovatiivisuuden perusta. Yksilötason innovaatioprosesseja tutkitaan usein termillä innovatiivinen työkäyttäytyminen, joka on käsillä olevan tutkimuksen lähtökohtana. Hermeneuttisessa tutkimuksessa etsitään nyt vastauksia siihen, voiko valmentava esihenkilötyö lisätä yksilön innovatiivista työkäyttäytymistä, miten tämä työkäyttäytyminen on ymmärretty ja miten sitä mitataan, ja onko yksilötason innovaatioprosessi samanlainen kuin aikaisempi tutkimus on sen käsittänyt. Väitöskirjan tavoitteena on lisätä ymmärrystä yksilön innovatiivisuudesta ja siitä, miten sitä tulisi lähestyä tutkimuksessa ja työelämässä. Ilmiötä lähestytään monimenetelmällisesti yhdistäen määrällisiä ja laadullisia menetelmiä ja erilaisia aineistoja. Kvantitatiivinen aineisto koostuu 4418 pk-sektorin työntekijöiden vastauksesta. Kirjallisuuskatsauksessa analysoidaan 255 artikkelin aineistoa. Tapaustutkimus pohjautuu 34 puolistrukturoituun teemahaastatteluun. Tutkimus osoittaa, että yksilön innovaatioprosessien tutkiminen termillä innovatiivinen työkäyttäytyminen on ongelmallista ja selittää syitä tähän. Yksilön innovaatioprosessia on viimeksi tutkittu 1980-luvulla, ja näihin tutkimuksiin perustuvat vielä nykyäänkin käytössä olevat mittaristot. Väitöskirjassa esitetään, että yksilön innovaatioprosessi on nykyään erilainen kuin 1980-luvulla, mm. siihen kuuluvien aktiviteettien ja yksilön roolin osalta. Innovatiivisen työkäyttäytymisen tutkimuksessa on keskitytty mekanistiseen käyttäytymiseen vaikuttavien tekijöiden mittaamiseen vanhentuneilla mittaristoilla sen sijaan, että olisi yritetty ymmärtää sitä, miten yksilöt nykyään innovoivat. Väitöskirja rakentaa uudenlaista kuvaa yksilötason innovaatioprosessista lisäten ymmärrystä siitä sekä tarjoaa kiintopisteitä yksilön innovatiivisuuden tukemiseen organisaatioissa.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Portfolios of Agile Projects: A Complex Adaptive Systems’ Agent Perspective

While agile methods can be extremely effective at a project level, they can impose significant complexity and a need for adaptiveness at the project portfolio level. While this has proven to be highly problematic, there is little research on how to manage a set of agile projects at the project portfolio level. What limited research that does exist often assumes that portfolio-level agility can be achieved by simply scaling project level agile methods such as Scrum. This study uses a complex adaptive systems lens, focusing specifically on the properties of projects as agents in a complex adaptive portfolio to critically appraise current thinking on portfolio management in an agile context. We then draw on a set of 30 expert interviews to develop 16 CAS-based propositions as to how portfolios of agile projects can be managed effectively. We also outline an agenda for future research and discuss the differences between a CAS-based approach to portfolio management and traditional approaches

An evolutionary complex systems decision-support tool for the management of operations

Purpose - The purpose of this is to add both to the development of complex systems thinking in the subject area of operations and production management and to the limited number of applications of computational models and simulations from the science of complex systems. The latter potentially offer helpful decision-support tools for operations and production managers. Design/methodology/approach - A mechanical engineering firm was used as a case study where a combined qualitative and quantitative methodological approach was employed to extract the required data from four senior managers. Company performance measures as well as firm technologies, practices and policies, and their relation and interaction with one another, were elicited. The data were subjected to an evolutionary complex systems (ECS) model resulting in a series of simulations. Findings - The findings highlighted the effects of the diversity in management decision making on the firm's evolutionary trajectory. The CEO appeared to have the most balanced view of the firm, closely followed by the marketing and research and development managers. The manufacturing manager's responses led to the most extreme evolutionary trajectory where the integrity of the entire firm came into question particularly when considering how employees were utilised. Research limitations/implications - By drawing directly from the opinions and views of managers, rather than from logical "if-then" rules and averaged mathematical representations of agents that characterise agent-based and other self-organisational models, this work builds on previous applications by capturing a micro-level description of diversity that has been problematical both in theory and application. Practical implications - This approach can be used as a decision-support tool for operations and other managers providing a forum with which to explore: the strengths, weaknesses and consequences of different decision-making capacities within the firm; the introduction of new manufacturing technologies, practices and policies; and the different evolutionary trajectories that a firm can take. Originality/value - With the inclusion of "micro-diversity", ECS modelling moves beyond the self-organisational models that populate the literature but has not as yet produced a great many practical simulation results. This work is a step in that direction

Agility in Information Systems – A Literature Review on Terms and Definitions

Agility is a term used in many works in the context of information systems. When studying the concept closer, it became obvious that there is a terminological heterogeneity preventing a common definition whilst at the same time not preventing the frequent use of the term. In order to approach the term in a structured way, the following two paths were chosen. Firstly, the term was traced back to its roots which showed its first appearance in organisational theory. Secondly, the major IS conferences (ECIS and ICIS) and the requirements engineering conference as a major computer science conference were analysed from 2001 when the agile manifesto was published which led to a wave of works on agility. The descriptive results are presented in the paper

Interactive situation modelling in knowledge intensive domains

Interactive Situation Modelling (ISM) method, a semi-methodological approach, is proposed to tackle issues associated with modelling complex knowledge intensive domains, which cannot be easily modelled using traditional approaches. This paper presents the background and implementation of ISM within a complex domain, where synthesizing knowledge from various sources is critical, and is based on the principles of ethnography within a constructivist framework. Although the motivation for the reported work comes from the application presented in the paper, the actual scope of the paper covers a wide range of issues related to modelling complex systems. The author firstly reviews approaches used for modelling knowledge intensive domains, preceded by a brief discussion about two main issues: symmetry of ignorance and system behaviour, which are often confronted when applying modelling approaches to business domains. The ISM process is then characterized and critiqued with lessons from an exemplar presented to illustrate its effectiveness

The Role of Human Resource Management in Achieving Organisational Agility

Whilst uncertainty and change has always been the focal point of strategic management theories, the increasing rate of change and uncertainty that organisations have been experiencing during the past few decades has stimulated new approaches to the strategic management of firms. ‘Agility’ has been introduced as an appropriate paradigmatic approach to integrative strategy making ((Doz and Kosonen, 2008, 2010; McGrath, 2013a, 2013b; Sharifi, 2014). The concept has been considered as providing a comprehensive and cohesive platform for addressing the new conditions in the business environment, epitomised in notions such as hyper-competition, hyper-turbulence, and the continuously morphing business environment, through the perpetual process of altering and adjusting the firm’s direction and courses of action (Doz and Kosonen, 2008). The main aim behind the concept is to maintain strategic supremacy and competitiveness by anticipating and taking advantage of change ((D'Aveni, 1994; Thomas, 1996; Doz and Kosonen, 2007; Jamrog et al., 2006), and coping with and surviving unexpected changes (Zhang and Sharifi, 2000). Agile organisations rely on a series of agility capabilities such as strategic sensitivity, decision making prowess, learning aptitude and resource fluidity and flexibility (Hamel and Prahalad, 1993; Dyer and Shafer, 2003; Doz and Kosonen, 2008; Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2009), many of which are human-related. A review of the agility literature revealed that achieving agility, similar to other value-based management philosophies, is heavily dependent upon various human factors such as Human Resources (HR) strategy, management approach and the prevailing culture of an organisation (Harper and Utley, 2001; Street et al., 2003; Dyer and Ericksen, 2006). However, the review of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) literature indicated that the SHRM studies have not responded to the agility agenda, thus, little is known about human resource management strategies and systems enabling organisational agility. In an effort to fill this gap, this research has focused on exploring the people aspects of organisational agility aiming at: 1. Identifying the HRM critical roles in developing organisational agility 2. Developing a theoretical model for crafting and implementing a HR Strategy which assists organisations in acquiring agile attributes. The conceptual model delineates the key constructs and features of an Agility-Oriented Human Resource Strategy (AOHRS). The research was conducted through exploratory qualitative research, collecting data mainly through semi-structured interviews with HR directors, agility professionals and senior managers from 17 large public and private organisations in the UK. The research explicated the need and developed a conceptual framework for AOHRS, which gives explicit attention to an array of external environment forces. The framework proposes the need for ongoing reinterpretation of contextual information, frequent review of necessary individual and organisation-wide skills portfolio and capabilities profiles, and frequent re-evaluation of HR principles, policies and practices-in-use to reflect the persistent uncertainty and continuously morphing business conditions. The framework also offers for a dynamic HR system which can analyse capability needs continuously and have appropriate policies and practices in place to easily and quickly reconfigure the firms’ human assets. The study contributes to the knowledge in the field of SHRM and organisational agility by presenting a comprehensive conceptual framework for AOHR strategy, complemented by an expansive definition for an Agility-Oriented SHRM suitable for an uncertain business environment. As part of this, the attributes and capabilities of the agile workforce, a series of Agility-Oriented HR Principles and a series of widely-adopted Agility-Oriented HR Practices are also empirically identified in addition to the characteristics and dimensions of an Agile HR Function

Organisational rhetoric and leadership in agile : a Wittgensteinian inquiry.

The focal point of this research has been the unpicking of reported experience versus rhetoric around a neo-bureaucratic approach to project management, referred to as “Agile”. This monolithic entity consists of many distinct methodologies, with an overlapping conceptual core. An understanding of Agile discourse is established through the data analysed as an object of comparison. The research findings speak to the space of legitimated expression and action, the depth grammar, of Agile organisation. The research was undertaken from a perspective of leadership agnosticism, in that the term was sceptically treated and included only in an emic capacity. The research is a coding-based analysis which runs across three strands of linguistic “metafunction”, as defined by Michael Halliday’s “Systemic Functional Grammar”. A total of 35 Agile experience reports were analysed through this process. The codes derived in this first pass were aggregated into groupings based on the perceived relation of events captured, termed manifestations. These manifestations were then themselves aggregated into a smaller set of categories. In practice, this meant a reduction from 138 codes, grouping similar exemplars, to 16 manifestations and then 6 categories. These categories establish the core concepts around which the depth grammar is presented through the first discussion chapter. This research has two primary contributions to Agile and another relating to leadership. In leadership studies, this research stands as an early empirical demonstration of the value in leadership agnosticism. Relating to Agile, a much needed description of the focal points of organisational talk in Agile practice is provided. Furthermore, it is argued that concepts of leadership had a significant role to play in disguising the continued operation of power in Agile contexts. This thesis, then, represents a contribution to Agile literature by providing a fuller exploration of the empirical challenges facing Agile’s idealised “Santa’s workshop” or “Hollywood/Disneyland” template.The focal point of this research has been the unpicking of reported experience versus rhetoric around a neo-bureaucratic approach to project management, referred to as “Agile”. This monolithic entity consists of many distinct methodologies, with an overlapping conceptual core. An understanding of Agile discourse is established through the data analysed as an object of comparison. The research findings speak to the space of legitimated expression and action, the depth grammar, of Agile organisation. The research was undertaken from a perspective of leadership agnosticism, in that the term was sceptically treated and included only in an emic capacity. The research is a coding-based analysis which runs across three strands of linguistic “metafunction”, as defined by Michael Halliday’s “Systemic Functional Grammar”. A total of 35 Agile experience reports were analysed through this process. The codes derived in this first pass were aggregated into groupings based on the perceived relation of events captured, termed manifestations. These manifestations were then themselves aggregated into a smaller set of categories. In practice, this meant a reduction from 138 codes, grouping similar exemplars, to 16 manifestations and then 6 categories. These categories establish the core concepts around which the depth grammar is presented through the first discussion chapter. This research has two primary contributions to Agile and another relating to leadership. In leadership studies, this research stands as an early empirical demonstration of the value in leadership agnosticism. Relating to Agile, a much needed description of the focal points of organisational talk in Agile practice is provided. Furthermore, it is argued that concepts of leadership had a significant role to play in disguising the continued operation of power in Agile contexts. This thesis, then, represents a contribution to Agile literature by providing a fuller exploration of the empirical challenges facing Agile’s idealised “Santa’s workshop” or “Hollywood/Disneyland” template