Mindful infrastructure as an enabler of innovation resilience behaviour in innovation teams
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the principles of high reliability organisations (HROs), present in safety and crisis teams, as applied to innovation teams. Safety and crisis teams cannot fail, as failure leads to disaster and casualties. Innovation teams cannot fail either, as this harms the organisations’ competitiveness and effectiveness. Do HRO principles, rooted in mindful infrastructure, enable innovation resilience behaviour (IRB)?
Design/methodology/approach
A study of 18 innovation projects performed by project teams was carried out. A survey by team members/leaders of these teams was completed; team members/leaders of other projects were added to achieve a larger sample. Mindful infrastructure consists of team psychological safety, team learning, complexity leadership and team voice. The analyses assessed the teams’ mindful infrastructures as a causal condition enabling IRB.
Findings
Applying qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), the findings indicate that mindful infrastructure enables team IRB, which is a set of team behaviours indicating their resilience when encountering critical incidents. Teams apply different “paths” to IRB.
Research limitations/implications
The exploratory study’s generalizability is limited. The findings nonetheless indicate the usefulness of non-linear techniques for understanding different roads to successful innovation processes.
Practical implications
HRO principles are applicable by non-HROs. These require investments in organisational learning.
Originality/value
HRO studies fail to account for the antecedents of HRO principles. This study groups these antecedents of team behaviour into a mindful infrastructure. QCA has not been applied within the domain of HROs before and only scarcely within the domain of innovation teams.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank colleagues Ernest de Vroome (TNO) and Rita Žiauberytė-Jakštienė (TNO), for advice on matters of statistics and the two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to significantly improve the article. Tinka van Vuuren (Open Universiteit Nederland) and Bart Cambré (University of Antwerp) commented on an earlier draft version. Emma Jansen (McGill University) and Daniel Drugge (proof reader) edited the text.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest with respect of authorship/publication.
The authors received no financial support.
Citation
Oeij, P.R.A., Dhondt, S. and Gaspersz, J. (2016), "Mindful infrastructure as an enabler of innovation resilience behaviour in innovation teams", Team Performance Management, Vol. 22 No. 7/8, pp. 334-353. https://doi.org/10.1108/TPM-12-2015-0058
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited