Peter Nielsen (Center of Labour Market Studies, Aalborg University)

Employee Involvement and Participation in Knowledge Organizations

Innovative firm behaviour has to do with embedded organizational competence. It is competence which rely on the ability of the workforce in the firm continuously to learn and develop knowledge as a collective resource, but not least on the existence of efficient channels of influence to get through with new ideas and problem solving in the organization. This paper focus on this important human side of innovation. We shall identify the building blocs adopted and combined when developing knowledge organizations. Building blocks which establish the framework of human interaction in the production process, aiming at knowledge creation, knowledge communication and materialization of knowledge as product or service innovations on the market. Further, we shall analyse the role and pattern of involvement and participation in relation to the process of organizational change towards knowledge organizations. The empirical analysis is based on a survey adressed to all Danish firms in the private sector with 25 or more employees, supplementet with a stratified proportional sample of firms with 20-25 employees. The survey has collected information from management as well as from employee representatives by means of two seperate questionaires, implemented through two phases of data collection in each of the firms selected. The present analysis is build on data from the management questionaire.

Keywords: Knowledge organizations, Innovation, Participation

Session: 6b   Room 2001   Category: Innovation 2

Paper