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Teamwork and Organizational Innovation: The Moderating Role of the HRM Context

Jan Spruijt
This study examines whether staff groups which are organized in teams are better at organizational innovation than staff groups who aren’t. Moreover, it examines whether human resource management (HRM) systems, which can be of facilitating or constraining nature, enhance the teamwork and therefore innovation outcomes.18 to 45 organizations from the UK manufacturing sector have been researched. Results suggest that the more widespread the use of teamwork in organizations, the higher the level of organizational innovation. Furthermore, this effect depends on the overall quality of the HRM systems that exist in their organizations. Teamwork is further moderated by an HRM practice that provides teams with time for thoughtful reflection. Thus, HRM systems can be of more or less facilitating or constraining nature for teams in organizations.

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Emotions as Constraining and Facilitating Factors for Creativity: Companionate Love and Anger

Jan Spruijt

This article indicates that the effects of anger on organizational innovation involve behavioural and cognitive facets. The behavioural effects of anger lead employees to criticize imperfection, correct errors, propose ideas boldly and take spontaneous actions. These behaviours are advantageous for asserting and evaluating ideas. The cognitive effect of anger enhances creativity and increases cognitive fluency. However, anger can cause distractions at work and hurt relationships and co-operation among co-workers. In summary, anger is beneficial for idea creation, assertion and evaluation, but is detrimental to idea implementation.

Employees in a state of companionate love tend not to criticize others and to show agreement, tolerate mistakes and worry about failure. These behavioural tendencies can damage the efficiency of idea creation, idea evaluation and prevent employees from adopting innovative ideas. However, companionate love enhances solidarity and co-operation, which is beneficial for idea implementation.

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How to Manage Improvisation: a succesfull ingredient for Creativity and Innovation

Jan Spruijt

This article discusses different forms of organizational improvisation (ad-hoc, covert, provocative and managed) and relates them to organization theory. Moreover, they propose an interesting overview of different forms of improvisation (ad-hoc, covert, provocative and managed improvisation) and answering questions like: what is improvisation?, when does it take place?, how does it take place?, and how is improvisation presented?

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Agile Methods in a New Area of Innovation Management and Business Modeling.

Jan Spruijt

This article by Link and Lewrick (2014), presented at the Science-to-Business Marketing Conference, provides an interesting overview of the possibilities of Agile Methods in Innovation Management. The authors propose that Agile Methods should not be used in R&D only, but also in fields like organizational culture, management style, structures, effective working and cunstomer relationships.

Preliminary results indicate that using their methodology for Agile Business Models creates more than 100% growth in new business results year-to-year, 100 times cost reduction, innovative solutions, brand image growth and reduction of process life cycles.

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