The Role of Narratives in Sustaining Organizational Innovation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bartel, Caroline A.; Garud, Raghu
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.1080.0372
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 107-117
• 关键词: innovation; narratives; COORDINATION; ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

摘要

Sustaining innovation is a vital yet difficult task. Innovation requires the coordinated efforts of many actors to facilitate ( 1) the recombination of ideas to generate novelty, ( 2) real-time problem solving, and ( 3) linkages between present innovation efforts with past experiences and future aspirations. We propose that innovation narratives are cultural mechanisms that address these coordination requirements by enabling translation. Specifically, innovation narratives are powerful mechanisms for translating ideas across the organization so that they are comprehensible and appear legitimate to others. Narratives also enable people to translate emergent situations that are ambiguous or equivocal so as to promote real-time problem solving. With their accumulation, innovation narratives provide a generative memory for organizations that enable people to translate ideas accumulated from particular instances of past innovation to inform current and future efforts.