Organising routines and spaces for employee-driven innovation in global work arrangements

Abstract

Based on a longitudinal case study in a multinational corporation operating in the medical industry, this paper shows how a group of employees from different sites and from various organisational levels learnt and innovated new training practices as they enacted and made use of organisational routines to develop a global training system that supported the company's overall standardisation process. The paper identifies how, in particular, three interrelated routines appear to trigger moments of recursive learning and employee-driven innovation (EDI) among employees. These routines are: 1) an organisational form of global communities of practice; 2) a 'cookbook' representing a set of guidelines to ensure a common approach to the sharing of best practices; 3) a set of governance procedures to support continual improvements. They do so by allowing employees to: a) collectively engage in and work towards a common purpose; b) identify, document and share knowledge about the problems and solutions they encounter in regard to their work; c) continually improve work practices. The findings contribute to an understanding of how organisational structuring of EDI can be developed and managed, and highlight the importance of deliberately organising routines, spaces and moments to foster such dynamics.