Steven Dhondt

Social Innovation of Work and Employment

Social innovation of work and employment are prerequisites to achieve the EU2020 objectives of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. It covers labour market innovation on societal level and workplace innovation on organisational level. This paper focuses on the latter. Workplace innovations are social both in their ends (quality of working life, well-being and development of talents together with organisational performance) and in their means (employee participation and empowerment). Complementary to technological innovations they regard innovations in social aspects of organisations such as work organisation, HRM and work relations. Workplace innovation – or innovative workplaces as it is sometimes called – deserves to be better incorporated in EU policies, as also has been recommended by the European Economic and Social Committee and the OECD. Some countries have experienced the benefits of national campaigns already.

The importance of organizational level decision latitude for well-being and organizational commitment

Purpose This paper focusses on participation in the workplace and examines the relative importance of different dimensions of job control in relation to subjective well-being and organizational commitment. These dimensions are (1) job autonomy (within a given job), (2) functional support (from supervisor and colleagues) and (3) organizational level decision latitude (shop floor consultancy on process improvements, division of labor, workmates, targets, etc.). Interaction with work intensity is looked at as well. Design/methodology/approach Measurements and data were taken from the European Working Conditions Survey 2010. The paper focusses on salaried employees only. The sample was further limited to employees in workplaces consisting of at least fifty workers. There are 2,048 employees in the final sample, from Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Within the European Union these countries were selected because of their sufficiently high levels of combined job control categories and more or less comparable work organization and labor relations. In this paper the focus is not on differences between countries and adding more countries would have introduces country characteristics as intermediate variables. Findings In the regression analyses, functional support and organizational level decision latitude showed stronger relations with the outcome variables than job autonomy. There was no relation between work intensity and the outcome variables. Two-way interactions were found for job autonomy and organizational level decision latitude on subjective well-being, and for functional support and organizational level decision latitude on organizational commitment. A three-way interaction, of all job control variables combined, was found on organizational commitment, with the presence of all types of job control showing the highest organizational commitment level. No such three-way interaction was found for subjective well-being. There was an indication for a two-way interaction of work intensity and functional support, as well as an indication for a two-way interaction of work intensity and organizational level decision latitude on subjective well-being: high work intensity and low functional support or low organizational level decision latitude seemed to associate with low well-being. No interaction was found for any dimension of job control being high and high work intensity. Research limitations/implications Although this study has all the limitations of a cross sectional survey, the results are more or less in accordance with existing theories. This indicates that organizational level decision latitude matters. Differentiation of job control dimensions in research models is recommended, and so is workplace innovation for healthy and productive jobs. Originality/value Most theoretical models for empirical research are limited to control at task level (e.g. the Job Demand-Control-Support (JDCS) model of Karasek and Theorell. The paper aims at nuancing and extending current job control models by distinguishing three dimensions/levels of job control, referring to sociotechnical systems design theory (De Sitter) and action regulation theory (Hacker) and reciprocity (Akerlof). The policy relevance regards the consequences for work and organization design.

The use of computers among the workers in the European Union and its impact on the quality of work

For many people it is impossible to imagine working life today without a computer. What the increase of the use of computers means for the quality of the work, is still under discussion. The object of this study is to show the recent developments (1992 - 2000) in the use of computers among the working population in the European Union and its impact on the quality of working life. The data used for these analyses were collected on a five-year basis by means of a questionnaire. Results show that the use of computers has increased between 1992 and 2000. The increase in computer use is almost completely the result of developments within white-collar occupations. In general, the use of a computer results in more qualified work and less physical strain. However, those who work with a computer permanently, clearly show more signs of physical and mental strain than those who use the computer only part of the time. This could mean that adding other tasks than computer tasks could improve the working conditions of those using the computer permanently. These results suggest that the increase of the use of computers will further improve the quality of work except when one neglects the dangers connected with a permanent use of computers.

Workplace innovation and social innovation: an introduction

This is the introduction to this special issue of World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development (WREMSD) dedicated to workplace innovation and social innovation related to work and organisation. As technological and business model innovations alone are not sufficient to enhance opportunities for businesses and employment, awareness is rising that better use should be made of human talents and new ways of organising and managing. In order to make working environments more receptive for innovation, and to enable people in organisations to take up an entrepreneurial role as intrapreneurs, a shift towards workplace innovation can be observed. Workplace innovation is complementary to technological and business model innovation, and a necessary ingredient for successful renewal, in that it addresses a type of management that seeks collaboration with employees through dialogue and employee engagement. Consequently, not only improvements of the quality of work for employees become beckoning perspectives, improving the business is at hand as well through successful innovations in the organisations functioning, its culture of cooperation and leadership and the implementation of changes in the domain of HR-practices.

Labour Productivity and Innovation Performance: The Importance of Internal Labour Flexibility Practices

This article develops and examines the idea that internal labour flexibility practices are beneficial for labour productivity and innovation performance of companies. This is tested in two studies using unique company level datasets. In Study 1, results obtained from 377 independent companies revealed that internal labour flexibility practices are positively related to objective labour productivity and its growth in the year following, also when controlled for objective labour productivity and objective external labour flexibility from the year before. In Study 2, results obtained from 4271 companies indicated that internal labour flexibility practices were positively related to product innovation and labour productivity. Findings suggest that internal labour flexibility practices benefit both labour productivity and innovation performance of companies. If innovation and labour productivity are considered key to long-term survival, firms and policymakers should consider internal labour flexibility practices.

Workplace Innovation, Social Innovation, and Social Quality

Social innovation is becoming a core value of the EU flagship initiative Innovation Union, but it is not clearly demarcated as it covers a wide field of topics. To understand social innovation within European policymaking a brief outline is given of EC policy developments on innovation and on workplace innovation. Defi nitions of social innovation formulated at the societal level and the organizational or workplace level are discussed. Empirical researh findings of workplace innovation in the Netherlands are presented as examples showing that workplace innovation activities boost organizational performance. The article explores the relation between workplace innovation and social innovation, and concludes that policy developments in the EU can be studied with the theory of social quality, provided that the latter in its empirical approach focuses on how individuals together constitute innovations.

Assessment of Stress Risks and Learning Opportunities in the Work Organization

Organizational innovation and recent European legislation on work organization require instruments, to be used by practitioners, for the assessment of jobs and the redesign of the structure of the division of labour. In The Netherlands the so-called WEBA-instrument (conditions for well-being at work) has been developed to assess stress risks and learning opportunities. The foundation of the instrument refers to the Dutch modern sociotechnical systems theory, the Karasek demand-control theory and the German action regulation theory. Its application is becoming widespread because, among other reasons, this instrument is supported by the Labour Inspectorate of The Netherlands. Besides a presentation of the instrument and its foundation, some examples will be given and some theoretical and practical problems discussed.

Foreign debt, distribution, inflation, and growth in an SFC model*

More ‘flexible’ labour relations significantly reduce labour productivity growth in sectors that tend towards a ‘routinised’ (other than a ‘garage business’) innovation regime. We argue that structural reforms that make firing easier will diminish the loyalty and commitment of workers, making accumulation of (tacit) knowledge more difficult. It also reduces training, increases knowledge-leaking to competitors and favours autocratic management and the growth of management and control bureaucracies. Our results are consistent with findings in macro-level studies that wage-cost saving f lexibilisation of labour relations and downward wage flexibility reduce labour productivity growth: a 1 per cent wage change causes a ≈ 0.4 per cent change in value added per labour hour.

Towards a comprehensive research design for studying integrated care

Given that integrated care includes many different aspects, this paper seeks to design a comprehensive research approach and explains how this approach is applied in the CORTEXS research project on integrated care in the Flemish Community in Belgium. A systemic view on integrated care is translated into a multi-level, multi-disciplinary, multi-method and multi-stakeholder research design. A phased approach of taxonomy development and literature review, comparative case studies, social lab activities and valorisation initiatives is devised in order to link fundamental research with strategic valorisation of the research results. While this innovative comprehensiveness is seen as a major strength, it is acknowledged that the research design comes with certain risks that need to be tackled.

Innovation Resilience Behavior and Critical Incidents: Validating the Innovation Resilience Behavior-Scale with Qualitative Data

Project teams carrying out innovation projects are investigated during critical incidents. Earlier, a Team Innovation Resilience Behavior (IRB)-scale was successfully applied to quantitative survey data (Oeij, 2017). Team IRB is the teams capacity to effectively deal with possible incidents and ensure the projects continuation. This study uses qualitative data to validate the Team IRB concept. Methodologically, it is concluded that the concept of Team IRB allows for its application to both qualitative and qualitative data. The content conclusion is that teams that score highly for Team IRB are better in recovering from critical incidents than they are in preventing critical incidents.