Management innovations : their adoption, diffusion and high-fidelity adaptation

• Main Author: Holmes, Kevin J.
• Other Authors: Shahidan, Malihe
• Published: Sheffield Hallam University 2016
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.741567

Innovation in the widest sense is, arguably, the only thing that drives organisations and economies forward - as such innovation ought to be a prime concern of decisionmakers, whether in the private or public spheres, but equally of those academics who study organisations. Recent research has also emphasised the importance of management innovation for firm performance, both as a complement to technological innovation (Damanpour et al. 2009) and as an independent phenomenon (Mol and Birkinshaw, 2009) and there is broad agreement that a better understanding of management innovation should be high on the research agenda (Volberda et al. 2013). This research is based on a single fine-grained longitudinal case study that focuses on the chronology as a narrative of a management innovation and uses archival data to explore not only how the case study organisation changes in order to adopt a management innovation, but also addresses research questions linked to the content, deployment approach and performance of that management innovation. It uses the case study to develop and validate a seven phase Intraorganisational Management Innovation Framework that is used to characterise the life-cycle of management innovations and also a Management Innovation Content Typology that is used to characterise their content. It finds that the role and impact of senior leadership and line manager support is consistent with Peeters et al. (2014) findings of fostering of legitimacy of the management innovation and also the actions of internal change agents to be instrumental in maintaining a high level of conformity. Fidelity to the original management innovation is also enhanced by recipients' participation in a global Performance Management System (De Waal, 2004) with its ingredients of a Strategy House, Policy Deployment Matrix and a weekly performance review or Comms Cell. The study also shows an emerging pattern of resistance from individuals to the adoption of the management innovation and it attributes this partly to 'over-zealous' behaviours by the internal change agents linking these to their role and psychological profiles. Rowland and Higgs (2009) describe this as 'shaping' leadership behaviours and a 'directive' approach to change. The study identifies the management innovation as 'hybridised' (Mamman, 2002) with its 'roots' in the existing disciplines of Project Management, Organisational Development and Lean Six Sigma or Continuous Improvement - this is consistent with the Gibson and Tesone (2001) argument that management innovations will morph into other names as time goes by.