Organizational Innovation and Organizational Change

Much of my career has been focused on innovation, especially within organizations and in the broader sense, society. In recent years my focus has been on the changing landscape of equality and the economy, and how societies must better structure relationships to increase innovation and improve the economy. I wrote this paper in 1999, focusing on organizational innovation. This paper can be found in the link under Academic Papers.

Abstract

Three ideas-a complex division of labor, an organic structure, and a high-

risk strategy-provoke consistent findings relative to organizational inno-

vation. Of these three ideas, the complexity of the division of labor is

most important because it taps the organizational learning, problem-solving,

and creativity capacities of the organization. The importance of a complex

division of labor has been underappreciated because of the various ways in

which it has been measured, which in turn reflect the macroinstitutional

arrangements of the educational system within a society. These ideas can

be extended to the study of interorganizational relationships and the theories

of organizational change. Integrating these theories would provide a gen-

eral organizational theory of evolution within the context of knowledge so-

cieties.