Beneficiary contact and innovation: The relation between contact with patients and medical innovation under different institutional logics

Nurturing innovative culture in a healthcare organisation - Lessons from a Swedish case study

PURPOSE

Healthcare organisations are often described as less innovative than other organisations, since organisational culture works against innovations. In this paper, the authors ask whether it has to be that way or whether is possible to nurture an innovative culture in a healthcare organisation. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse nurturing an innovative culture within a healthcare organisation and how culture can support innovations in such a healthcare organisation.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

Based on a qualitative case study of a healthcare unit that changed, within a few years, from having no innovations to repeatedly generating innovations, the authors describe important aspects of how innovative culture can be nurtured in healthcare. Data were analysed using inductive and deductive analysis steps.

FINDINGS

The study shows that it is possible to nurture an innovative culture in a healthcare organisation. Relationships and competences beyond healthcare, empowering structures and signalling the importance of innovation work with resources all proved to be important. All are aspects that a manager can influence. In this case, the manager's role in nurturing innovative culture was very important.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

This study highlights that an innovative culture can be nurtured in healthcare organisations and that managers can play a key role in such a process.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

The paper describes and analyses an innovative culture in a healthcare unit and identifies important conditions and strategies for nurturing innovative culture in healthcare organisations.

Systematic review of institutional innovation literature: towards a multi-level management model

Institutional innovation creates smart institutions that idiosyncratically thrive in a world of exponential change. Through policy-driven interventions and experiential learning, managers of institutions become adept at delivering praxis- and crisis-driven innovations required for survival and success. Similarly, the management of institutional innovation remains an interest in research due to links of this form of innovation to economic growth, and the demands of on-going major socioeconomic transformations due to technological advances, increased occurrences of major crises, and emerging socioeconomic challenges. Accordingly, a key question arising from the literature concerns the range of determinants and priorities that influence institutional innovation for delivering society value. Thus, the onus is on scholarship to capture and advance knowledge for harnessing the potency of institutional innovation. The purpose of this article is to analyse the current state of research on institutional innovation. Using the systematic review methodology, we identify and critically appraise 485 peer-reviewed scientific publications between 1969 and 2021. The review finds key determinants and management priorities with a view to developing a multi-level management model of institutional innovation. Guided by insights from the review, the article sets a research agenda for future management studies of institutional innovation.

Employee competence development in corporate volunteering

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine how employee competences can be developed through corporate volunteering (CV). Specifically, this study focuses on diversity of volunteering studies categorized according to the type of beneficiaries and intensity of volunteer contact with them. The study examines how the beneficiary-employee relation influences the development of employee competences in CV projects.

Design/methodology/approach

In this qualitative empirical study, interview data collected in Poland about the perceived effects of CV projects on employee competences was used.

Findings

The findings suggest that to understand the competences generated in CV, attention needs to be paid to the nature of the volunteering study itself. The study proposes four different logics of competence development in CV, based on the type of the beneficiary and contact with them.

Research limitations/implications

The study builds on managers’ perceptions of competence development. For a holistic understanding, future research should include employees’ perceptions of the process. Also, more research is needed regarding national and organizational settings as factors in competence development through CV.

Practical implications

The study suggests how companies could best engage in volunteering programs and improve existing ones to make them more beneficial for all parties involved.

Social implications

The findings build the better business case for CV and other corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, i.e. they deliver rationales for business engagement in this regard.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the conceptual understanding of CSR activities by presenting four logics of competence development in CV.

Capabilities of Corporate Volunteering in Strengthening Social Capital

Corporate volunteering is becoming increasingly popular among the ways that companies manifest their social responsibility. Its popularity is due to the variety of benefits it brings to all parties. Among other things, it is capable of strengthening social capital, although specific phenomena and processes related to this remain largely unexplored. The aim of the paper is to identify how the frequency and intensity of contacts between volunteers and beneficiaries affect social capital building. The empirical study was based on a qualitative research approach and conducted in the form of individual semi-structured interviews with employees responsible for corporate volunteering in their companies. The results of the study suggest that corporate volunteering strengthens social capital regardless of the extent to which volunteers have contact with the beneficiaries of their volunteering work. However, the frequency and intensity of this contact may affect specific dimensions of social capital, leading to the strengthening of bonding social capital and/or bridging social capital.

DARE to be different? A novel approach for analysing diversity in collaborative research projects

Growth in collaborative research raises difficulties for those tasked with research evaluation, particularly in situations where outcomes are slow to emerge. This article presents the ‘Diversity Approach to Research Evaluation’ (DARE) as a novel way to assess how researchers engaged in knowledge creation and application work together as teams. DARE provides two important insights: first, it reveals the differences in background and experience between individual team members that can make research collaboration both valuable and challenging; second, DARE provides early insights into how team members are working together. DARE achieves these insights by analysing team diversity and cohesiveness in five dimensions, building on Boschma’s multi-dimensional concept of proximity. The method we propose combines narratives, maps, and indicators to facilitate the study of research collaboration. The article introduces the DARE method and pilots an initial operationalization through the study of two grant-funded biomedical research projects led by researchers in the UK. Suggestions for further development of the approach are discussed.