When Employee Driven Innovation Becomes an Organizational Recipe – Implications for What It Means to Be an Innovative Employee

Abstract

Despite the fact that creativity and solution-seeking activities to all times have been crucial for workplace progress, output and employee wellbeing, it is only in recent years that employee driven innovation has emerged as research theme in innovation literature. How to foster employee-driven innovation has been a theme of interest, both for researchers and for practitioners. In the Nordic countries, public sector is seeing EDI as a way of renewing its services, and additionally enhancing employee wellbeing. Based on findings in a longitudinal study of the implementation of EDI in Norwegian municipalities, there is reason to question whether the way EDI is implemented, actually can lead to less employee wellbeing through alienation.