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FINAL PROJECT

TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Introduction
2. Background
2.1 Innovative Behavior
2.2 Leadership

3. Methodology
3.1 Respondents
3.2 Data collection
3.3 Analysis
4. Results
4.1 Innovative role modeling
4.2 Intellectual stimulation
4.3 Stimulating knowledge diffusion
4.4 Providing vision
4.5 Consulting
4.6 Delegating
4.7 Support for innovation
4.8 Organizing feedback
4.9 Recognition
4.10 Rewards
4.11 Providing resources
4.12 Monitoring
4.13 Task assignment
4.14 Contingencies
5. Discussion
5.1 Conclusions and implications
5.2 Limitations and future research
References:

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1. Introduction

One method for the institutions to be very inventive is to take advantage of their staff’s capability
to invent. According to Katz (2004, p.132), “an organization that depends solely upon its
blueprints of prescribed behaviour is a very fragile social system”. The work has turned out to be
very intellectual –based and described in a very inflexible manner. “Under this situation, the
workers could assist in enhancing the trade functioning by means of using their capability to
create concepts and make use of these as foundation for novel and efficient goods, services and
functioning systems. Several advocates and research scholars at present favour the idea that
personal invention assists in order to achieve institutional efficiency” (Van de Ven, 2006). For
making sure “the achievement of a regular flow of inventions, the workers require to be eager
and capable to make inventions. Personal inventions are the core to many popular handling
theories, in addition to entire quality handling” (Mc Loughlin and Harris, 2007), regular growth
projects, Kaizen, business initiatives, and institutional knowledge. Now we discuss on how
managers could impact personal invention.

The personal invention has become functional in several means. For instance, “the construct has
been considered in the lines of personality features” (Hurt et al, 2007) or productivity. Other
scholars have held a habitual view.

We adopt similar view like the latter and discuss the impact of managers on workers’ personal
invention habits. Many f the habit study on personal invention has concentrated on originality,
for instance, on the way the managers could rouse concept creation. Yet, how the original
concepts are executed and at what time, a vital aspect of invention system is in the process of
study. We add both habits in the field of concept creation and the usage and execution of such
concepts as vital aspects of inventive habit.

2. Background

2.1 Innovative Behavior

The theorists dealing with inventions frequently define the system of invention as having
consisted of two major stages: beginning and execution. The distinction between the two stages

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is considered to be spot where the concept id initially accessed; i.e. the spot where the judgement
in order to execute the invention is taken. The initial phase concludes with the creation of a
concept, at the same time the second phase concludes when the concept is executed (King and
Anderson, 2002).

Several researches bestow attention particularly on the inventive or concept creation phase of
invention. Yet, invention consists of the execution of concepts as well. At this stage, we describe
inventive habit as a habit guided in the direction of the beginning and execution (inside a job
profile, team or institution) of novel and constructive concepts, systems, goods or processes.
Hence, as described, the inventive habit could be viewed as a multi-faceted, over leaning
construct which absorbs the entire habits by means of which the workers could put in to the
inventive procedure. In the present literature, our attention is on two central inventive habits
which expose the two-phase procedure: concept creation and execution habit. Such habits were
considered earlier as the vital stages in the exercise of personal invention (Axtell et al, 2000).

2.2 Leadership

The word leadership refers to varied things to varied persons. Even though no final description of
headship is available (Yukl, 2002), most of the descriptions on headship show a few
fundamental aspects, in addition to “teams” “impact” and “aim”.

We consider headship as the exercise of impacting other people in the direction of attaining a
few types of expected result.

The headship study has accessed many views, manager qualities, habits, and the impact of
situational features on manager efficiency, for instance, all have been researched. During the last
two decades, transformation oriented and fascinating headship methods have accessed
momentum. We confine ourselves to the habit view and discuss as to how the manager habits
impacts the workers’ concept creation and execution habit. Even though the influence of
managers is viewed as instinctively attractive, many habitual headship researches focus on
functional or efficient results instead of invention –oriented results.

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3. Methodology
We clubbed exhaustive interactions and paper study in order to create the list of manager habits.
The exhaustive interaction is a qualitative study method which is specifically helpful for
investigation initiatives, like creating hypotheses on a specific topic (Churchill, 2009).

3.1. Respondents

We chose 12 respondents by means of non-random selection method. Every respondent was a

manager and/ or trader (trade owner) in a tiny knowledge –oriented service company (100
workers). The knowledge-oriented service is an apt but lesser studied situation in personal
invention study. According to Alvesson (2000, p. 1101), the knowledge oriented companies are:
“companies where most work can be said to be of an intellectual nature and where well-qualified
employees form the major part of the workforce”. As per Hislop (2005, p. 217), the knowledge
employees are: “people whose work is primarily intellectual and non-routine in nature, and
which involves the utilizations and creation of knowledge”. 

On the basis of this description, a wide variety of trades could be grouped as knowledge-
oriented, consisting of advocates, specialists, IT/ software creators, executives in the advertising
line, accountants, scientists, engineers, and architects. The entire respondents led (team of)
workers as an item of their day to day job. Because we wished to comprehend which type of
manager habits responsible for changes in workers’ concept creation and execution habit, we
focused our interaction to both the managers who were efficient in extracting workers’ inventive

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habit and managers who failed to openly attend on this or accessed only meagre outcomes.

Table I.: Characteristics of Respondents

3.2 Data collection

Majorly unorganized methodology involving two parts was utilized in the face to face interviews
that took place. Firstly we enquired from every participant about his or her own leadership
technique, in their organization what part is played by innovation and if the workers are made a
part of innovation then how they are done so. Once these general questions were over, we then
prompted the respondents to speak freely regarding their approach and deeds as a leader.

3.3 Analysis
In order to locate common classes of meaning the interview reports were deliberated thoroughly
and on the coding process two researchers worked separately. The disparities in classes were
talked about and solved. The backdrop data for our study was formed by the current literature as

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advised by Strauss and Corbin. Yukl’s taxonomy of managerial practices was utilized as a first
categorization of leader behaviors.

4. Results
There are six leader behaviors, which are:

4.1 Innovative role modeling

It is advantageous if the leaders themselves are illustration of innovative performance, as
indicated by majority of interviewees.

4.2 Intellectual stimulation

Instigating or motivating workers to create ideas is very easy in the way that just excite or
persuade them to generated ideas, as emphasized by certain participants.

4.3 Stimulating knowledge diffusion

Motivating the distribution of information between the employees increases idea creation is what
various participants in the front runners group believed. At times they organized informal get
together mainly with the objective of knowledge distribution, whereas generally very less
consideration was given to the same by non-innovative participants.

4.4 Providing vision

The respondents in the front runner’s faction attempted to lead the innovative processes in their
organization by offering their workers with a sense of path or track and overarching objectives
and also certain general rules. On the other hand the little innovative respondents did not talk
about offering a dream to aid innovative actions. Innovative participants tried to convey their aim
and drive and wanted to offer their workers with a symbol of hope for innovative endeavor.

4.5 Consulting
Majority of the respondents impulsively pointed that they had a loose management approach and
were sure of the worth of seeking advice from the juniors, which was worth noting. At the time
of application of certain new thing the one’s who need to embrace it must be permitted to impact
decision making as pointed out by both categories of respondents i.e. the innovative and the not
so innovative participants.

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4.6 Delegating
The leadership approach of majority of the participants had extensive delegation as an element of
it. In order to make sure that the work outcome is of good quality the interviewees of the two
groups attempted to offer the employees with enough independence.

4.7 Support for innovation

Support can inspire workers in both stages of innovation process as pointed out by the interviews
conducted by us. In producing and generating ideas, experiencing support was assumed to be
useful. One of the participants said that the employees were aware of the fact that he likes
innovative ideas and for the same reason they come up with new ideas daily which is what
excites him.

4.8 Organizing feedback

Arranging feedback is important and pertinent as felt by innovative respondents. They were also
of the view that it must be carried out immediately when the verdict to move forward with an
innovative idea is taken. Feedback can be given by the leaders; however they might ask other
people like juniors to take up this job. Allowing workers to show a preliminary concept or idea to
a certain lot of clients and then seeking their feedback, is other method in which respondents
organized feedback.

4.9 Recognition
While various participants in the front runners group impulsively emphasized that they mostly
attempted to be positive towards employees who came up with new ideas, whereas on the other
hand the less innovative participants confirmed the same only when we enquired about it openly.
An illustration of this is, an innovative interviewee said that when an individual comes up with a
idea or suggestion then he shows keen interest in that and at times he also gives the person one or
two days to research on the innovation.

4.10 Rewards
Both the groups of respondents agreed on the idea as advocated by certain participants that
monetary incentives are useful to focus the efforts of workers when attempting to apply new
services or work procedures.

4.11 Providing resources

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Giving the requisite time and finance appears to be crucial immediately when the decision to
apply a potential idea is taken.

4.12 Monitoring
The non-innovative respondents seemed to have stronger monitoring benchmarks in comparison
to the innovative ones.

4.13 Task assignment

Even-though no significant dissimilarity appeared among the two subsets, it was pointed out that
it’s vital for task substance to go with job incumbent’s skills, capabilities and likings.

4.14 Contingencies
Besides leadership, certain participants spoke about other aspects which might support or hinder
the innovative behavior of workers.

5. Discussion

5.1 Conclusions and implications

Exploiting the workers capability to be innovative is a technique by which companies can

become more innovative. The objective of this paper was to add up to the literature on individual
innovation by offering an account of leader behaviors which might impact workers behavior
towards innovation. We concentrated on actions which particularly affect workers personal
innovative endeavors. Precise attention, while creating the inventory, was given to the creation of
ideas as well as workers application attitude which means behaviors aimed at the application of
innovative ideas since the second part has been given quite little importance till now. In our
focus on leaders in knowledge intensive service organization we are not of the same view as the
earlier work. Considering the relevance of innovation by workers in knowledge intensive
services, it is astounding to note that individual innovation has been given very less importance
in such companies. The insight in the leaders’ behavior which they utilize in knowledge
intensive services to instigate innovation in their workers is offered by this paper.

5.2 Limitations and future research

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There are certain confines in the present research which provide an outline for further study. A
large scale follow up survey might be beneficial to determine which one of the recognized leader
behaviors do actually have the projected association with worker’s innovation and / or
application behavior , since we restricted ourselves to qualitative methodologies.

References
1. Alvesson, M. (2000), “Social identity and the problem of loyalty in knowledge-intensive
companies”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 37 No. 8, pp. 1101-23.
2. Axtell, C.M., Holman, D.J., Unsworth, K.L., Wall, T.D., Waterson, P.E. and Harrington,
E. (2000), “Shopfloor innovation: facilitating the suggestion and implementation of
ideas”, Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, Vol. 73, pp. 265-85.

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3. Churchill, G.A. (1999), Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations, The Dryden

Press, Forth Worth.
4. Katz, D. (1964), “The motivational basis of organizational behavior”, Behavioral
Science, Vol. 9, pp. 131-3.
5. Hurt, H., Joseph, K. and Cook, C. (1977), “Scale for the measurement of innovativeness”,
Human Communication Research, Vol. 4, pp. 58-65.
6. King, N. and Anderson, N. (2002), Managing Innovation and Change: A Critical Guide
for Organizations, Thomson, London.
7. McLoughlin, I. and Harris, M. (1997), Innovation, Organizational Change and
Technology, Thompson, London.
8. Van de Ven, A. (1986), “Central problems in the management of innovation”,
Management Science, Vol. 32, pp. 590-607.
9. Yukl, G. (2002), Leadership in Organizations, 5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs,
NJ.

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