Innovation and Creativity at Work: Psychological and Organizational Strategies

Innovation in work organizations has long been of great concern to social scientists. The volume of research and writing on innovation has failed to produce the advance in understanding for practitioners or researchers which might reasonably be expected from such an investment of intelligence and energy. In this volume the topic of innovation is discussed generally and terms used are carefully described. The research is reviewed and suggestions for alternative theoretical and research directions are put forward. It is argued that significant advances in understanding innovation at work can come from cominbing psychological approaches to the subject with the dominant organizational orientation in the existing research literature. The book is divided into five parts. The first provides a discussion of "definitional issues and literature review". In the introductory chapter conceptual overlaps with topics such as creativity in the existing psychological literature are explored. Different types of innovation at work are briefly described and a typology is suggested which distinguishes between innovations at the individual, group and organizational levels of analysis. In part two research on "individual" and group innovation is described. Farr and Ford focus on the individual level of analysis and offer a new model for understanding individual innovation. The third part of the book is dedicated to an exploration of "organizational level innovation" and four differing orientations are proposed. Each promises to advance theorizing by alerting us to the complexity of this topic. The fourth part of the book focuses on "interventions" to facilitate innovation and creativity in work settings. Farr critically assesses the methods described in the existing literature for facilitating individual innovation. His chapter describes how individual approaches can be developed which utilize existing knowledge in the areas of attitude change and communication and argues that a research based approach is particularly effective for facilitating individual innovation at work. In the final section the theme is "integration". Staw produces a model of indivudal creativity and organizational innovation, blending psychological and organizational approaches.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Definitions and previous research: innovation at work, Michael A.West and James L.Farr; innovation at work - the research literature, Nigel King. Part 2 Individual and group innovation, James L. Farr and Cameron M.Ford; innovation and creativity in working groups, Nigel King and Neil Anderson; the effectiveness of research teams - a review, Roy Payne. Part 3 Organizational innovation: innovation effectiveness, adoption and organizational performance, Fariborz Damanpour; organizational innovation, Harry Nystrom; rethinking organizational innovation, John R.Kimberly et al; the cultural deconstruction of innovation, Nigel Nicholson. Part 4 Interventions: facilitating individual role innovation, James L.Farr; innovation and the design of work and learning environments - the concept of exploration in human-computer interaction, Siegfried Greif and Heidi Keller; facilitating innovation in large organizations, Robert Rosenfeld and Jenny C.Servo; improving corporate climates for creativity, Robert M.Burnside. Part 5 Integrations: an evolutionary approach to creativity and innovation, Barry M.Staw; the social psychology of innovation in groups, Michael A.West.