Creating the Bottom-up Organisation from the Top: Leaders as Enablers of Workplace Innovation

Abstract

While variations are seen to shape the specific characteristics of workplace innovation in each organisation, common outcomes are found in terms of innovative behaviour based on enhanced employee autonomy. Each of the six case studies conducted in the UK describes the instigation of workplace innovation practices from the top down, perhaps reflecting the relative absence of the workplace social partnership arrangements associated with CME countries. In four of the cases, workplace innovation resulted directly from the appointment of a new Chief Executive committed to distributed forms of leadership and with a transformational agenda. Three of these cases are examined below. It is equally important to understand the nature of the journeys that followed. While some people in shared leadership roles have a clear vision of the systemic change they are trying to establish, others begin the journey from one of several specific issue-related angles such as industrial relations, a changing competitive environment, concordance with a parent company's corporate values or the need to sustain competitiveness. At its best, this begins an incremental though sustained journey of experimentation, trial and error, and learning as workplace innovations are established, consolidated and extended, characterised by 'bottom up' employee empowerment and initiative. As the Eurofound case study report argues, the resulting practices 'do not often constitute a coherent programme, and in many cases they reflect developments over a number of years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)