Based on the contributions of different theorists, in this essay, administration and innovation are analyzed. In the organizational structure of the company, the development of innovations and the way in which their results are used constitutes a specific heritage of a dynamic type, strongly influenced by the capacity for management and strategic planning.
In this sense, the development of innovative activities constitutes a necessary but not sufficient condition to guarantee good economic performance. This requires that the strategic choices made by management are related to the innovative advances of the company. In other words, a continuous and synchronous exchange between the strategic / decisional process and the innovation process must be verified.
Key Words: Organizational innovation, strategic choices.
Innovation is a topic that has aroused the interest of researchers, although it is not something new. The concept of innovation is introduced in the economic sphere by Schumpeter 1, who, from the beginning of his work in 1911, was interested in economic development, giving a fundamental role to innovation, both technological and non-technological.
However, the economic landscape has changed considerably in organizations as the 21st century has advanced and various economic trends are having a great impact on their organizational level.
1 One of the concepts introduced by Schumpeter that has had the most influence is that of innovation. According to him, there is a state of non-growth, the economic "circuit", and a state of growth, "evolution." The transition from "circuit" to "evolution" is through innovations, which are the engine of growth.
From the point of view of Amiolemen et al. (2013), innovation is a fundamental variable for the competitive advantage in the development of economies around the world and has the potential to stimulate growth at the micro and macro levels. Becheikh, Landry and Amara (2006) consider that innovation implies - from a technological point of view - the creation of a new process or product, or the implementation of significant improvements in processes and products, and not simply changes to themselves.
Organizations today are in a global marketplace where it is increasingly difficult to maintain a competitive advantage.
According to specialists, innovation is inevitable for companies that want to develop and maintain a competitive advantage or enter new markets (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995; OECD, 2005).
In the organizational structure of the company, the development of innovations and the way in which their results are used constitutes a specific heritage of a dynamic type, strongly influenced by the capacity for management and strategic planning. In this sense, the development of innovative activities constitutes a necessary but not sufficient condition to guarantee good economic performance.
This requires that the strategic choices made by management are related to the innovative advances of the company. In other words, a continuous and synchronous exchange between the strategic / decisional process and the innovation process must be verified.
From this perspective, there are strong interactions and links between the decision-making process and innovation activities. In other words, innovative activities are a premise for any strategic decision related to company management and have impacts and consequences on the set of activities carried out. However, the full use of the results of innovative activities basically depends on the company's capabilities to develop and carry out coherent competitive strategies.
In the innovation process, different knowledge and capacities come together in the different areas of the company, whose use depends on the organizational culture. In other words, the modalities and characteristics assumed by the management and the criteria that guide the decision-making process.
Development
Over the course of its process, modern management has managed to break down complex activities into small, repeatable steps, enforce standard operating procedures, measure costs and profits to the last penny, coordinate the efforts of tens of thousands of employees, and synchronize operations on a global scale. However, those successes have come at a high price.
The modern managerial apparatus makes wayward, stubborn, and free-spirited human beings obey rules and regulations, but at the cost of wasting prodigious amounts of imagination and initiative.
It imposes discipline on operations, but jeopardizes the adaptability of the organization.
It multiplies the purchasing power of consumers around the world, but it also enslaves millions of people in semi-feudal hierarchical organizations.
And although modern management has helped to dramatically improve the efficiency of companies, there is little evidence that it has made them more complete.
Modern administration has given a lot but has also taken a lot, and continues to do so.
Perhaps the time has come to renegotiate the deal. We must learn to coordinate the efforts of thousands of individuals without creating an oppressive hierarchy of supervisors; keep costs under tight control, but without strangling the human imagination; and to build organizations where discipline and freedom are not mutually exclusive.
Although management practice is not evolving at the same speed as before, the environment facing 21st century companies is more volatile than ever.
Recent research by LG Thomas and Richard D'Aveni indicates that leadership in industries is changing hands more frequently and that competitive advantage is being lost more quickly than ever before. Today it is not just isolated companies that are left out of the future, but entire industries, whether it be traditional airlines, old guard department stores, television networks, large pharmaceutical companies, vehicle manufacturers or the written press and record labels.
Deverticalization, disintermediation and outsourcing, together with the growth of joint development projects and industrial consortiums, make companies have less and less control over their destinations.
The internet has in a very short time transferred the bargaining power from the hands of producers to those of consumers.
Previously, customer “loyalty” used to be a trick of the top 4search costs and limited information, and companies benefited from customer ignorance. Today, they are in control like never before, and in a world of near-perfect information, there is less and less tolerance for mediocre products and services. The ever-lowering costs of communications and globalization are opening the doors of industries to a horde of new competitors arriving at extremely low costs. These newcomers are eager to exploit the old guard's cost schemes. Although some veteran companies will join the “race to the bottom” and move their core activities to the least expensive places in the world, many others will not be able to easily reconfigure their global operations.As Indian companies absorb service positions and China relentlessly expands its share of global manufacturing, companies from all other countries will have to fight to maintain their margins.
These new realities demand different organizational and managerial capacities.
To thrive in an increasingly disturbing world, companies must be as strategically adaptable as they are already operationally efficient.
To safeguard their margins, they must become hotbeds of unconventional innovation, and in order to beat a growing crowd of young companies when it comes to ideas and inventiveness, they will have to learn to inspire their employees to do their best. same day after day. These are the challenges that management innovators will have to face in the 21st century.
Modern administration is not simply a set of useful tools and techniques: it is a paradigm, to refer to the already hackneyed slang of Thomas Kuhn. A paradigm is more than a way of thinking: it is a way of looking at the world, a broad and deeply generalized idea about the types of problems that are worth solving or that are simply capable of being solved. On this point Kuhn points out: “A paradigm is a criterion for choosing the problems that… supposedly have a solution. To a large extent, they are the only problems that the community… will urge its members to face. Other problems… are rejected by metaphysicians… or simply because they are too problematic to deserve time.
A paradigm could even isolate the community from socially important problems that cannot be reduced to the form of
puzzles because they can't be posed in relation to the tools
conceptual and instrumental that the paradigm offers ”.
We are all captive to our paradigms, and as managers we are dependent on a paradigm that elevates the quest for efficiency above any other goal.
This is hardly surprising considering that modern management was invented to solve inefficiency problems.
A little history will help emphasize the importance of this point. While it is impossible to pin down the exact date of birth of the modern administration, most historians place Frederick Winslow Taylor near the start of the epic, and consider him one of the most influential innovators of the 20th century.
Taylor believed that job design based on an empirical data-driven approach would translate into significant increases in productivity.
Taylor, in his capacity as father of the scientific administration, battled against the waste of movements, poorly designed activities, lax or absurd performance standards, the lack of consistency between job requirements and worker capabilities, and systems of incentives that discouraged best efforts, all of them adversaries that any 21st century manager would instantly recognize.
He argued that efficiency was the result of knowing exactly what employees are expected to do and then making sure they do it in the best and cheapest way.
He believed that administration could become a true science built on the foundations of clearly established principles, laws, and rules.
For Taylor, as for any CEO interested in economics and for every consultant who preaches efficiency, the secret to increasing productivity was in systematic administration.
Indeed, let us imagine Taylor looking from his perfectly organized "sky" and smiling affectionately at those who apply the Six Sigma, who still spread its principle today. (His only surprise might be that 21st century managers continue to be haunted by the same problems that occupied his inventive mind a hundred years ago.)
Taylor's contribution to economic progress, and that of the administration in general, is evidenced in more than a hundred years of increasing productivity in factories.
For example, between 1890 and 1958, in the United States, manufacturing output per hour of work increased almost five times, and since then it has continued to grow. However, this increase in productivity brought with it a
greater bureaucratization.
How else could Taylor's goal of mechanizing work have been met if not to build a bureaucracy, with its standardized routines, narrowly delineated job descriptions, cascades of goals, and hierarchical structures of dependency?
Max Weber, Taylor's renowned contemporary German sociologist, saw in bureaucracy the height of social organization: Universal experience tends to show that purely bureaucratic administrative organization is capable, from a purely technical point of view, of generating the highest degree of efficiency and, in this sense, it is, formally, the most rational means known for putting imperative control over human beings into practice. It is superior to any other scheme in terms of precision, stability, strict discipline and reliability. Consequently, it allows calculating to a particularly high extent the results for the heads of the organization and for those who act in relation to it.
Several characteristics distinguished Weber's ideal organization: The division of labor and responsibilities were clearly defined for each of the members of the organization.
The posts were organized into a hierarchy, which translated into a scale of authority.
Members were chosen for positions based on their technical suitability or training.
The managers worked for the owners of the company, but were not the primary owners.
All the members of the organization had to submit to strict rules and controls pertinent to their particular work. The rules were impersonal and applied uniformly.
There is little in this that could surprise the 21st century manager. Although Max Weber died almost 90 years ago, control, precision, stability, discipline and reliability, characteristics to which he paid tribute in his hymn to bureaucracy, are still today the canons of modern administration.
Although we deplore the bureaucracy, it is still the organizing principle of practically all public and commercial organizations in the world.
And although there are progressive managers bent on improving its ankylosing effects, few are able to imagine a radically different alternative.
So, here we are, still working on Taylor-type puzzles and living in Weber-like organizations.
It is fair to accept that many of the new challenges that the 21st century poses to management have been recognized in boardrooms and executive offices, and occasionally one encounters truly serious attempts to innovate management.
However, to date we have seen our progress limited due to a paradigm focused on efficiency and based on bureaucracy.
Business innovation is anything that substantially modifies the way it is managed, or modifies the usual forms of organization.
And the most common processes to consider are: strategic planning, budgeting, project management, hiring and promotions, training and development, internal communications, knowledge management, among others.
Innovation, in its development and application, is classified into: operational innovation, product innovation, strategic innovation, and administrative innovation.
This development confronts companies with current challenges such as: accelerating the pace of strategic renewal, making innovation part of daily work, and creating an attractive and inspiring work environment for employees.
Authors like Linton, 2002; Tang, 1998; Lawrence, 1954; Greiner, 1967; Argyris and Schön, 1978; Levy and Merry, 1986., They have approached organizational innovation in a theoretical way, either to identify its structural characteristics or to analyze its effects on products, innovation processes, creativity and organizational change; Or, to understand how organizations emerge and develop and how their members learn.
Furthermore, various empirical studies have currently been found that have explored organizational innovation and its relationship with variables such as organizational culture, human capital, leadership styles, organizational learning, and knowledge management (Wu and Lin, 2011; Noruzy et al., 2013; Souleh, 2014).
Innovation is at the center of economic change (OECD, 2005). For Schumpeter, the important thing is radical innovations, those capable of bringing about "revolutionary" changes, decisive transformations in society and in the economy.
Radical innovations means: The introduction of new consumer goods on the market, the emergence of a new method of production and transport, the opening of a new market, the generation of a new source of supply of raw materials, a change in the organization of any organization or in its management process.
Companies are looking for a new technological device as an advantage in innovation, which could improve productivity processes and maintain a 8 competitive cost advantage.
In the case of product innovation, companies may have the position of a monopoly that allows them to locate themselves in a competitive market.
Innovation is essential for the survival of organizations. Recently, it has become one of its most important engines, as it supports the fulfillment of the challenges and the dynamics of internal and external forces by bringing new ideas for products, services and processes that can give value to these organizations (Milhim and Schiffauerova, 2013). Furthermore, innovation can be considered as the main source of change, competitiveness and economic growth.
Deiss (2004) considers organizational innovation as an essential part of the organizations mission and, also, as a process that must be continuous.
Organizational innovation is understood as the production, adoption and exploitation of new ideas that add value in the economic and social spheres through the renewal and expansion of products, services, markets, the development of new production methods and the establishment of novel systems management (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010). Shieh (2010), points out that it implies new ways of organizing work in different areas, such as personnel management, capitation and employee empowerment.
Hence, it is considered an important source of competitive advantage in an increasingly changing environment.
Strategic innovation
Strategic innovation is a new concept regarding products, processes and structure that adds value to the company and improves the performance of its organizational management (Wu and Lin, 2011). In addition, Porter (1996) considers that innovation strategies are important means for organizational development, since due to the lack of sustainability of the competitive advantage of markets and technologies, strategic tools have been adopted that can provide a unique position. and valuable for corporate effectiveness.
When formulating a strategic innovation, the current condition, capacity and viability of the organization must be taken into account, so that it can integrate the strategy with the fundamental tactics to face the competition (Wu and Lin, 2011).
Daft (1978) divided strategic innovation into technological innovation and innovation management.
Conclusions
The administrative theories of the last century were very practical, given the conditions of the time in which they were implemented, but today; Due to the new demands of the markets, it is necessary to innovate, evolve administrative processes, form organizations more adaptable to change. Organizations that do not initiate a process of administrative innovation and constant evolutionary creativity, are called to disappear or pay dearly for their delay, since it is proven that, by insisting on traditional administrative processes, many large organizations have lost position in the market and will hardly reach it. to get it back.
Organizational innovation can be one of the main sources for organizations to develop competitive advantage, value, change, competitiveness, economic growth and ensure their survival.
According to Damanpour and Evan (1984), strategic innovation involves implementing innovative strategies that can directly improve organizational innovation.
In other words, the theoretical argumentation sustains that strategic innovation predicts organizational innovation.
However, it is necessary to highlight that the phenomenon of innovation cannot be studied outside the structure of economic interests and power in which it is generated, developed and used. An analysis of innovation must start, first of all, from elucidating the relationships between this socio-cultural framework and the innovative process.
References
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