PEOPLE, ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT

Introduction to People, Organisation and Management

Introduction to People, Organisation and Management

Introduction

The paper compares two companies Biogenta plc that is a world-leading business organization which produces crop-protection products (herbicides, fungicides and insecticides) and Outback Inc. established in the early 1990s. Outback is an adventure-based tour company located in Sydney, Australia. Change and innovation are necessary to adapt to rapidly changing and challenging environments. Furthermore, innovations can substantially improve our living conditions: Think of innovative medical treatments that have greatly increased life expectancy, or innovations such as soil fertilizers that have substantially reduced food shortage. Innovation can be defined as the intentional introduction and application within a particular social unit (e.g., a team or organization) of ideas, processes, products, or procedures that are new to that social unit and that are designed to be useful. Examples of innovations include the introduction of a new computer program in Outback Inc. and Biogenta plc, the introduction of new products to a market, or the introduction of a new service to customers. This entry focuses on team innovation (in which the social unit is a work team). A discussion of some basic distinctions between innovation and creativity as well as between different types of innovation follows. Finally, the entry examines the factors that determine the level of innovativeness of a team.

Analysis of issues

There is a close relationship between innovation and creativity (i.e., the generation of new and useful ideas). Creativity is often needed for innovation, but there are two important differences between creativity and innovation. First, innovation refers to change that is new only to the relevant unit of adoption; it does not require absolute novelty. Thus, adoption in Outback Inc. and Biogenta plc of a computer program that is widely used outside thse organization can hardly be called creative but still counts as innovation. The second is that innovation, in addition to the generation of ideas, also implies the implementation of these ideas into practice.

Thus, innovation often requires both the generation and the implementation of ideas, and these can be seen as different stages in the innovation process. It has even been argued that there is an inherent tension between creativity on the one hand and innovation implementation on the other: For creativity to flourish, certain conditions are needed (such as high levels of job autonomy) that might actually have detrimental effects on implementation (which would be easier with high levels of centralized control).

Related to this is the distinction between the products of innovation: incremental and radical innovations. Incremental innovations refine existing products, services, or procedures. Radical innovations are major transformations of existing products, services, or procedures that often make previous products, services, or procedures obsolete (e.g., the introduction of MP3 players largely made Discmans obsolete). A further distinction is between technical and administrative innovations. Technical innovations (not to be confused with technological innovations) are directly related to the primary work activity of Outback Inc. and Biogenta plc. This may be the introduction of new products or services or the ...