About the authorsFietje Vaas is a psychologist temporarily affiliated with TNO, The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. Currently she is working on topics such as innovation of work organization and the management and employment relations of private and public organizations.Rita Žiauberytė-Jakštienė is a junior researcher at TNO, The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. Formerly she has been a recruitment consultant in personnel selection agencies in Lithuania. Her research interests include social innovation, workplace innovation, and goal-setting topics.Peter R. A. Oeij is a senior researcher/consultant at TNO, The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (Leiden, The Netherlands). The main topics of his work are innovation management, workplace innovation, social innovation, productivity, flexibility, working smarter and team work.
AbstractMany practitioners find it problematic to understand and describe workplace innovation (WPI). Whereas there are well-known definitions of WPI, these remain highly abstract. We argue that, for practitioners, case examples of WPI best practices can be a valuable addition to these definitions. In this respect, based on our practical experience with WPI and the cases that resulted from the Eurofound study (Eurofound, 2015), we propose the following criteria for a case to be a good example for practical purposes. First, the company that serves as a case should have implemented good workplace innovation practices that have resulted in or theoretically promise to result in positive outcomes for the organization and for the quality of work. Second, the case description has to provide actionable information about the WPI practices. Third, the narrative of the case has to be inspiring and provide possibilities for stakeholders to identify with it. We present a number of the Eurofound cases that are informative and inspiring for practitioners while also presenting actionable information.
Definitions of workplace innovation are not very actionablePractitioners interested in implementing workplace innovation (WPI) practices are in dire need of clear definitions of the concept. A recent study on WPI and its indicators conducted by the European Commission (2014), in the frame of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) 2013-2014 project, identified 8 different definitions of WPI (p.13 and 14). Whereas they differ to a certain extent, all of these definitions conceptualize WPI as being a field or fields of action, a participative process and a win-win outcome for the organization and employees. Moreover, some provide specific examples of WPI practices, such as: participative job design, selforganised teams and continuous improvement.