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The active participation of all personnel is the basis for continuous improvement in companies. This paper describes the main features of systems for channelling such participation, used in a series of companies in the automotive parts industry in the Northwest of Spain. These characteristics were obtained from research carried out in mid‐1997 and based on personal interviews. Likewise, the great spread of this kind of practice found in this supply industry, mainly made up of SMEs, supports the idea that it is not only applicable in large companies. However, it should not be forgotten that the automotive sector has one of the longest traditions in continuous improvement and employee involvement activities.

The paper aims to identify the relationship between the use of storytelling and innovative work behavior (IWB) in organizations.

The research took place in a human resource development (HRD) training session for leaders of Alpha Group. In this session, storytelling was adopted to discuss innovation and IWB. Following the training, the leaders completed a questionnaire about the effectiveness of the stories for the construction of knowledge and IWB. Data were collected from 97 leading sectors. Subsequently, data analysis was performed to identify correlations between the aspects.

The paper provides empirical insights about the use of storytelling, the effectiveness of the stories, as well as their relationship with the innovative behavior of sectors leaders in a Brazilian organization. It has identified the relation between effectiveness of stories and level of innovative behavior.

Owing to the chosen research approach, the research results cannot be generalized. Because it is a study of a single organization, the results concern to the reality experienced in the organization studied. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test this relationship in other organizations to contribute to the discussion and practice of innovation in HRD.

Stories can contribute to innovative behavior, and innovative behavior contributes to helping understand the stories. HRD practitioners can provide the use of storytelling, combined with other forms of interventions, to enhance IWB to promote collaborative learning culture and work engagement.

Previous papers have identified the role of HRD in the development of IWB in organizations. Theoretically, previous papers have also highlighted that storytelling can be a tool for the development of innovative behavior. The paper empirically has tested these contributions, identifying emerging aspects of this relationship.

While there has been an abundance of research on the positive outcomes of creative environment, little work has been done on how creative environment influences the general work outcomes of noncreative specialist workers. The paper aims to fill this void by examining the influence of creative environment on absenteeism among garden variety workers and the mediating role of job satisfaction.

The paper uses cross-sectional data of 116 noncreative specialist workers to empirically test the hypotheses. The authors used covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) through the lavaan package for the statistical software R.

Results found that, for a cross section of noncreative specialist workers, a one standard deviation increase in a worker's creative environment would decrease that worker's absenteeism by 0.447 standard deviation. The creative environment also explained 11.3% of the variance in absenteeism. Subsequent analysis showed that job satisfaction fully mediated the relationship between the creative environment and absenteeism and that the results were resistant to omitted variable bias.

The study contributes to theory and practice by showing empirically that creative environment leads to positive work outcomes, despite the innovation level required by the job. This study advances research on creative environment by targeting the garden variety workers, underscores the importance of cultivating a creative environment and calls attention to the complexity of the creativity–job affect link.