Innovation in workplace can be viewed as an idea which allows better functionality of the organisation in accomplishing its goal. Although, that itself is contingent on the fact if there is any actual relationship between the two. According to Oeij & Vaas in “Effect of workplace innovation on organisational performance and sickness absence”, workplace innovation refers more to the commercial aspect rather than the social aspect. It refers to profitability and aspects which play significant roles in ensuring that, although it does recognise the role that social innovation plays in proper utilisation of the workforce and the effect it has on workplace innovation. This acknowledgement of this dynamically interlinked organisational and social innovation can provide an insight into business psychology, paving way for true positive psychology in workplace.
What is Workplace Innovation
Before we dive further into the relationship between workplace and social innovation; It will be prudent to purposively define workplace innovation’s goals. Referring back to Oeij & Vaas’ study, workplace innovation’s goal must be “to simultaneously improve both employer interests and employee interests”. Things like productivity and competitive advantage would belong to employer interests, while work-life balance, quality of work and work life would belong to employee interests. To elaborate, Workplace innovation must affect both aspects at certain degree to allow consistent profitability (since at the end it is more of a commercial innovation). This is where its relationship with social innovation starts to uncover itself.
Innovations which improve employee interests could very well be classified as partly social innovations. They might even compromise on profitability to allow for improvement in previously mentioned aspects like work life balance. For e.g. many firms continued paying employees their salaries throughout quarantine, even when no work was being done. Workplace innovation cannot be attributed solely to even a directly productivity based innovation as well. This why work innovation as a concept acts complementary to technological innovation.
Utilisation of all features of a software like Microsoft office requires training and guidance; one could be exposed to technological innovation but fail to utilise its benefits. It is the other aspect of work innovation in form of creative educational policies for employees which would allow for maximum benefit out of such technological innovations. The key word in the goal described by Oeij and Vaas is ‘simultaneously’, it signifies the requirement of change from profit focused strategy to a social strategy which promises to accomplish a similar task through empowerment of the work force by using workplace culture. Workplace innovation, (if my interpretations are logical) according to Oeij and Vaas must recognise the ambivalence required in decision making for an optimum and healthy profitability of an organisation.
One could say that workplace innovation is a tool which can be used to regularly define workplace culture than just simply let it permeate itself as a vibe through silences and communication gaps. Although this begs the questions, first, how does workplace innovation define workplace culture? And secondly, does regularly ‘defining’ the workplace culture actually cause a difference?
How does workplace innovation work
Arundel, Lorenz and et. all in their work describe the bottleneck for European workplace innovations were widespread working environments which were not fertile enough for such innovation. They concluded that working environments or work cultures played a significant role in presence of innovation at a particular firm. They juxtaposed it onto Japanese working culture which promoted incremental innovations and subsequently led to better adaptation to change. Park and Tanesab in 2020, examined the relationship between workplace innovation and performance. It concluded that “causal effect relationship of organisational innovation to organisational work performance is greatly significant”. It further noted using the example of Korea’s public-sector organisations; that effective mediation of performance resources allowed Korea to maintain high innovation. In simple words, the effective management of human resource led to the most significant and effective way to increase profitability and improve a business. Aboramadan, Albashiti, Alharazin & Zaidoune in “Organizational culture, innovation and performance: A study from a non-western context” also reach similar conclusion where results imply that the ‘values’ and ‘philosophy’ adopted within Palestinian banks contributed to the positive performance of the bank. Significant relationship between workplace innovation and workplace performance was also reconfirmed.
These findings show that both workplace innovation and work culture share a reproductive relationship with each other, which in turn affects the performance. It can be hypothesized that work place innovations act as a medium of communication for a company/firm’s values. If a company focuses too much on the profit aspect, the policies and lack of innovations to improve employee interests show that. On the other hand if a company focuses too much on the social aspect without properly motivating its employees to work with focus on profitability; shows the lax culture of workplace which decreases productivity. The ideal aim would be to get secured hard workers who care and attach themselves to the values of the company. As it was noted by Aboramadan and et all, values play key roles in formation of a work culture. Coming back to the point, workplace innovations pave way in establishing an official cannon of values which are much more impactful than “Wellness Thursdays” or arbitrary focus shift onto “positive aspects of work”.
Just like how attribution works in humans, there must be a filter on interpretation of information conveyed or policies implemented by an organisation. An employee might completely disregard the attempts to create a positive work culture because the work innovations or lack of them provide a contradictory story about those values. The reason for employee dissatisfaction also lies in the working of positive psychology. Gratitude is one of the strongest predictors of satisfaction in people and might be the secret behind improved productivity in an innovative and open work environment.
We know that gratitude evolved from a simple process like reciprocity; which then led to specialised identification and shunning of selfish individuals. The inherent distrust and lack of motivation to invest energy in selfish individuals is as significant as the feelings of positive emotions when someone does something good for you. Employees might be utilising attribution theory to provide a character to the workplace by using workplace policies and their overall treatment. This character is what might act as a medium which leads to legitimisation of workplace culture, while also taking away legitimacy from other social innovation ideas which don’t reflect in the policies. This established distrust or lack of freedom in an establishment is bound to decrease innovation from employees which would lead to further degradation of the culture.
Conclusion
The mechanism that workplace cultures use to permeate through an organisation lie in evolutionary psychology. They were evolved specifically to manage social relationships in humans. Which is why it hardly comes as a surprise that they would have tangible effects in a work place. However, the nuances of how one activates these evolutionary non-zero sum game rewards (gratitude) is much more complicated than just distraction from the bad and reorientation to focus on the good. Employees and Employers alike must be convinced to choose a stance of altruistic governance promoted by features of positive psychology which lead to practical satisfaction and most importantly generate motivation to do better.
Work Cited:
- Oeij, P., & Vaas, F. (2016). Effect of workplace innovation on organisational performance and sickness absence. World Review of Entrepreneurship Management and Sustainable Development, 12, 101-129. https://doi.org/10.1504/WREMSD.2016.073430
- Arundel, A., Lorenz, E., Lundvall, B.-Á., & Valeyre, A. (n.d.). The Organization of Work and Innovative Performance: A comparison of the EU-15. 36.
- Tanesab, J. P., & Park, J. J. (2020). Impact of Organizational Innovation on Work Performance: The Mediating Effect of Work Resources in Public-Sector Organizations. International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.30845/ijbht.v10n3p3
- Aboramadan, M., Albashiti, B., Alharazin, H., & Zaidoune, S. (2020). Organizational culture, innovation and performance: A study from a non-western context. Journal of Management Development, 39(4), 437-451. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-06-2019-0253
- Sussex Publishers. (n.d.). Gratitude. Psychology Today. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/gratitude
- Nowak, M. A., & Roch, S. (2007). Upstream reciprocity and the evolution of gratitude. Proceedings. Biological sciences, 274(1610), 605-609. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.0125
- Trivers, R. L. (1971). The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 3557.
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