Creativity and innovation research have led to a considerable number of interesting results about its causes and consequences at individual, team, and organizational level, with particular attention being paid to performance. In addition, interest for studying facilitating and moderator variables is increasing.
Recent developments claims for a shift in some issues of innovation research. Bledow, Frese, Anderson, Erez & Farr (2009 a & b), from a dialectic perspective, considered innovation as a iterative, cyclical and recursive process of idea generation and idea implementation, which requires both exploration (focused on originality, divergent thinking and initiative) and exploitation (focused on standardization, regularity and control) strategies for being successful, calling for ambidexterity in teams and organizations.
Anderson, Potocnik & Zhou (2014) argued against the fallacy of maximization of innovations, which considers innovation as always positive and effective. These authors call for additional research and a critical review of findings are needed about the unexpected or disruptive effects of innovation at organizations (as resistance to change, conflict development, decrease of social cohesion, consequences on decision making and risk assumption, etc.) and regarding the effects of innovation on workers’ well-being (tension and distress, overload and increased work demands, propensity to leave the company, job involvement and commitment, etc.).
Zhou & Hoever (2014) advanced that future research will pay attention to analyzing the effects of facilitating environments on non-innovative people and the effects of hindering contexts on innovative people, calling for more complex and sophisticated designs to study the interaction of different variables pertaining to agents and contexts.
The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight these more dysfunctional, conflictual, and counterproductive aspects of creativity and innovation in organizations and their impact on the psychological well-being from a dialectic perspective in the study of organizational innovation at individual, team and group, and organizational levels. In addition, this Special Issue aims to advance in the study of interactions among agents’ and context’s variables for considering expected and unexpected innovation outcomes.
Submissions to this special issue could cover, but are not restricted to the following topics:
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What are the lessons learned from practice on how to develop innovations in organizations? What are the differences at different levels of analysis?
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Looking beyond performance: What other effects do innovation produce regarding employees’ well-being? How individuals cope with high demands on innovations?
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Beyond the “pro-innovation bias”: Are all effects of innovations good? Are there unexpected and counterproductive effects of innovations? How innovation could affect conflict, overload, failure or other disruptive results in organizations?
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Analyzing the dynamics of innovation at individual, team and organizational level. Do the same variables and factors affect different phases at the innovation process?
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Personal initiative and creativity as potential drives for organizational innovation.
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How to combine individual, group and organizational resources and capabilities to increase innovation benefits? Considering ambidexterity.
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Applying a dialectic perspective to innovation research.
Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted by May 31st, 2015.
All manuscripts should be submitted through the EJWOP Scholar One Manuscripts submission site selecting ‘Studying Innovation at Organizations: A dialectic perspective’ as the Special Issue type.
Authors should adhere to the EJWOP Instructions for Authors when preparing their manuscripts. All submitted manuscripts are subject to a double blind academic review process. They will be evaluated based on their contribution to the topic and the regular EJWOP review criteria.
For further information, or if you have any questions about suitability of your work, please contact the editors:
José Ramos: Jose.Ramos@uv.es
Neil Anderson: Neil.Anderson@brunel.ac.uk
Jose M. Peiro: Jose.M.Peiro@uv.es
Fred Zijlstra: Fred.Zijlstra@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Editorial information
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Guest editors: José Ramos, Neil Anderson, José M. Peiró, Fred Zijlstra
