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The purpose of this study is to explore the association of two opposite leadership styles with employee-driven innovation and how the leader–member exchange mediates these relationships.

The authors used online surveys administrated in two waves to collect data from 315 employees working in the banking sector in Norway. Exogenous variables, which include empowering and directive leadership styles, were measured at time 1, while the endogenous variables of the leader–member exchange and employee-driven innovation were measured at time 2. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The findings confirmed that empowering leaders are more likely to have a positive relationship with their subordinates and in turn, stimulate employee-driven innovation. Conversely, the directive leadership style was found to have a negative relationship with the quality of the relationship between leaders and subordinates. It was also found that the association of directive leadership with employee-driven innovation was negative and indirect through the leader–member exchange.

The data for the study were collected from a single organisation, which limits the generalisability of the study. Several other leadership styles were not covered in this study.

This paper provides empirical evidence to support the association between leadership styles and employee-driven innovation. Analyses of these relationship types are unavailable in the employee-driven innovation literature.

Enterprises in the digital context attach importance to the participation of heterogeneous subjects in co-creation activities. As the core source of organizational innovation, employees are bound to assume responsibilities or provide role value in the process of digital innovation. While employee-driven digital innovation frameworks are being explored, together with research on employee innovation behavior mostly focusing on the “net effect” of single-level variables on outcomes.

Following the interaction logic of employee level and organizational level, this study applies ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) theory and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the influence of various digitization related factors' conditional configuration on employees' digital innovation behavior.

The results indicate that type of “self-motivation with multiple supports”, “organization-driven with digital oriented” and “digital-driven with ambidextrous complementary” constitute the configuration that drives high digital innovation behavior, while type of “cognitive deficit with environmental slack” and “fuzzy motivation with opportunity misapplication” constitute the configuration that drives nonhigh digital innovation behavior.

This conclusion enriches the theoretical research on digital innovation that regards individuals as action potentials and provides important guidance for how to cultivate and activate employees' digital innovation behaviors in management practice.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a workshop process to enhance the learning of employee-driven innovating (LEDI) and to evaluate in multiple ways the practical effects of the LEDI process, which aimed to enhance the employee-driven innovation practices at workplace level in a public organisation. Although front-line employees are increasingly encouraged to participate in innovation, organisations lack multi-level knowledge on the practices, outcomes and effects of participation.

A six-month development process (LEDI) was conducted to empower front-line hospital support service workers to learn to innovate and to apply this in the services they provide. The process consisted of different themes: future visions, current services, creating new services and evaluations of ideas and innovation embryos. The multi-method evaluation of the process included pre-evaluation of the generated innovation ideas, a developmental evaluation of the selected innovation embryos, a follow-up evaluation of the innovation ideas and an evaluation of the organisational level effect via a quantitative survey.

The intervention process had positive effects on employee participation and learning to innovate. The conclusion of the four evaluations is that the LEDI process developed a new kind of agency among employees and enabled significant improvements to services. The evaluation of the organisation-level effect revealed that the process had also improved the views regarding preconditions for development.

The intervention method is a practical application of employee-driven innovation conception that is validated as practical and effective at workplace level. The process is a viable method for enhancing workers’ innovation-related learning in service organisations. The novelty of the method is based on the multi-disciplinary combination of approaches that consist of theories of practice-based innovation, expansive learning and emphatic human-centred service design.

This paper aims to examine employee-driven innovation (EDI) intertwined with learning, creating a new description combining these two concepts: employee-driven learning and innovation (EDLI). This paper provides insights into the nature of EDLI based on the existing theories and perspectives. It seeks to elaborate EDLI as an ongoing process in and through work.

The paper draws on Jaakkola’s (2020) guidance for structuring a conceptual article. The authors first describe the theoretical starting points related to EDI and then elaborate its relationship with learning at work, with the aim of structuring the key elements involved, drawing on and interpreting existing theory and knowledge.

In summary, advanced here are five premises for describing EDLI at work: (1) EDI and workplace learning are strongly intertwined phenomena, (2) learning in the EDI process occurs simultaneously at the intra-personal and inter-personal levels as a reciprocal process of adaptive and innovative learning, (3) innovations are only manifested in and are relevant to the specific cultural-historical and social context of particular enterprises, (4) the continuity of innovations and learning processes is enabled by participation and (5) triggers from outside the workplace, behind the innovation and the specific consequences (that transcend workplace boundaries) of the innovation anchor aspects of the process outside the workplace or work practice.

The paper advances a description and justification of EDLI. As such, it extends, connects and updates previously established theoretical models and explanations of this about EDIs. Based on the premises advanced here, the theoretical and practical contributions are discussed and the research gaps and needs for further research identified.

Frontline employees’ suggestions are relevant for employee-driven organisational change because their knowledge is partially constructed from direct contact with customers and indirectly with competitors. The employee’s personality is a paramount individual characteristic that can exert a major potential influence on the proposal and implementation of those suggestions. This study aims to discuss the impact of the personality dimensions in the Big Five model (i.e. extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience) on suggestions generated by frontline employees and implemented in their firms.

A questionnaire was prepared based on a review of the academic literature. The 5 presented hypotheses were tested with data from 167 frontline employees from hotels in Tenerife (Spain).

Results show the relevance of frontline employees’ three characteristics of personality regarding the employee-driven organisational change. Thus, their extraversion, neuroticism and lack of direction tend to be relevant drivers of the suggestion and implementation of change.

Frontline employees act as change agents in hospitality firms. Managers should develop recruitment processes that allow to select individuals prone to proposing innovative suggestions and creating a friendlier system for submitting and defending them.

Employee-driven organisational change becomes crucial for the survival and growth of hospitality firms. Relatively few studies have been conducted on the role of frontline employees as change facilitators in the sector. This study contributes to shedding light on this research gap from a personality approach and the study also provides practical implications to increase valid suggestions in the hospitality sector.

The purpose of this paper is to define the factors of innovativeness in the context of employee involvement and study how these factors could be affected by an employee-driven innovation (EDI) process.

This study follows a quantitative approach through a survey. The survey data were collected from a case organisation, where employees designed an innovation manual in a participatory process to support their daily innovativeness.

According to the results, the EDI manual process can assist the organisation in developing their ideation and organising structures. The employees felt that their ideas were appreciated more after the innovation manual process. Understanding about innovation and innovativeness was also increased. In between two survey rounds, the focus of the most urgent development targets had shifted from internal idea management practices towards customer ideas, cooperation and appreciation of different ideas. This indicates that the internal innovation system has to work before it is reasonable to involve other stakeholders.

The study presents an empirical example of an employee-driven process in the context of public sector healthcare. It increases understanding about the importance of employee involvement in the innovation manual development process and how this process affects the factors of innovativeness.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the “grand structure” of the phenomenon in order to identify both the underlying processes and core drivers of employee‐driven innovation (EDI).

This is a conceptual paper. It particularly applies the insights of contemporary research on routine and organizational decision making to the specific case of EDI.

The main result of the paper is that, from a theoretical point of view, it makes perfect sense to involve ordinary employees in innovation decisions. However, it is also outlined that naïve or ungoverned participation is counterproductive, and that it is quite difficult to realize the hidden potential in a supportive way.

The main implication is that basic mechanisms for employee participation also apply to innovation decisions, although often in a different way. However, the paper only identifies the grand structure of the phenomenon. The different identified drivers have to be further elaborated and empirically tested.

EDI is a helpful tool to gain competitive advantage by utilizing the knowledge and creative potential of employees.

This is the first paper that gives a systematic overview of the grand structure of EDI and derives the most important moderating factors from that.

The purpose of this study is to examine learning and employee-driven innovation (EDI) in the public sector, with a particular focus on the interplay between employee engagement and organisational conditions.

The material consists of qualitative interviews with 23 participants from three municipal sites of innovation support that participated in a national programme aiming to strengthen municipalities’ innovation work.

The study found numerous constraining organisational conditions resulting in consequential loss of employee engagement for EDI. The conclusion drawn is that employee engagement and enabling organisational conditions are central to EDI in public sector workplaces, and that incorporating EDI into municipal daily operations requires paying attention to the interplay between organisational conditions and employee engagement.

This paper provides important guidance for supporting EDI in the public sector. Implementing EDI into operations requires employee engagement to be successful. However, employees’ engagement should not be overlooked or taken for granted. A practical implication of this study is that EDI in the workplace must be encouraged by creating a learning environment that supports innovative learning in the workplace. In practice, measures should be taken to support employee engagement by creating organisational conditions that provide a more expansive learning environment to ensure the continuity and perpetuation of EDI in public sector organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about the mechanisms behind, and the implications of, varying involvement in digitally enhanced employee-driven innovation (EDI) by studying how a firm integrates a web-based tool in the organization of its EDI process.

Based on a qualitative in-depth interview study with managers and employees at one high-performing and one low-performing office of a global IT firm, a critical discourse analysis was performed. It explored how the EDI discourse was produced, distributed and consumed in relation to the web-based tool for collecting and selecting employee ideas.

The results demonstrate that the production of the innovation discourse by the top-level management, which emphasizes client satisfaction rather than employee engagement, restricts the employees’ utilization of the digital platform that distributes the discourse. However, at the high-performing office, employee participation is ensured because the local managers act as co-distributors of the digital tool.

The single case study design limits the generalizability of the results, but is nevertheless relevant for understanding the mechanisms and implications in similar contexts where web-based tools are used to enhance EDI processes.

The study provides practical insights into the importance of local management’s active promotion of digital tools in order to ensure employee involvement.

The study contributes to the EDI literature by identifying some mechanisms behind and the implications of varying employee involvement in digitally enhanced EDI processes.

This paper addresses the impact of institutional industrial relations arrangements at organisation level on the extent and pattern of utilisation of different forms of employment flexibility. In particular, it evaluates the extent to which factors such as union recognition, union density and union influence impact on the diffusion of different forms of flexibility in five European countries (Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the UK). In assessing the impact of institutional industrial arrangements at organisation level, this paper focuses on three particular types of employment flexibility: temporary working, fixed term contracts and job sharing. A number of hypotheses are identified to help explore the impact, if any, of unionisation, sector and country of origin on the extent of utilisation of both management and employee‐driven flexibility forms.