Innovation and Organisation

Abstract

An important function of organisations is to provide general routines, structures, and logics that unburden the staff of the necessity to constantly take new decisions, change the focus, and deal with uncertainties while fulfilling their daily tasks. Consequently, the logics behind organisations and innovation must naturally stand in a relationship of tension: maintaining routines and organised everyday action is opposed to innovation action, as has been shown by Lipsky’s studies on street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky 2010). He observed that public services and their administration were resistant to change and found ways to oppose the pressure on the part of the managers or service users. This autonomy and the inventiveness contained therein must be understood to change organisations and implement new processes or technologies (cf. Eurich and Langer 2016). Although all forms of change are unique, different studies indicate that innovation rather takes place in incremental than in sudden and radical processes (Laino and Sütó 2013) and that incremental change often has a longer lasting influence than radical intervention.