Enhancing Organisational Innovation Capability Through Systemic Action Research: A Case of a Swiss SME in the Food Industry

Abstract

This paper presents detailed insights into the nature of innovation dynamics of an SME operating in the food industry. Furthermore, the paper highlights how Action Research has changed and enhanced SME's capability to innovate. Within the exploratory action research based case study described in this article, the researchers interacted closely with one company with regards to a newly launched innovation process over a time period of more than 18 months. The analysis contributes to the fields of action research and innovation research in three respects: First, it exemplifies how systemic action research as a method can be applied on the organisational level in the private sector. Second, it demonstrates how useful action research can be for fostering the innovativeness and creativity of a company. Lastly, the analysis illustrates the extensive time horizon of an action research project.

Towards a new framework: Understanding and managing the supply chain for product-service systems

“…Second, as a nonstructured method, narrative interviews offer interviewees an opportunity to assume an active role in which interviewees not only provide the interviewer with answers but also decide on the topics they would like to discuss. 32 The interviews focus on how to provide product-related service more effectively. The formal interviewees cover the service engineers, spare parts managers, salesmen, users, local service providers, and other managerial personnel, as shown in Table 2.…”

Enabling organizational cultural change using systemic strategic human resource management – a longitudinal case study

“…An action research cycle approach was used during the implementation phase, with a total of six 3-monthly cycles undertaken during this period. At the end of each 3 monthly period, a workshop with the implementation team leaders and the project managerswas held to undertake a full review, to reflect and to redesign where necessary, consistent with the action research approach (Fletcher, Zuber-Skerritt, Bartlett, Albertyn and Kearney 2010;Maurer and Githens 2010;Kocher et al 2011). The projects were fully or partly implemented by June 2001, and the outcomes from the projects are explained in the next section.…”

“…The systemic action research approach (Coghlan 2002;Burns 2007;Flood 2010) may be used in complex pluralist contexts. Burns (2007) describes it as a strategy for whole system change, and Kocher, Kaudela-Baum and Wolf (2011) demonstrate its use in practice in generating cycles of ongoing improvement in a Swiss organization. This study adds to these findings and would suggest that there is another possibility in designing and implementing cultural change by using a systemic approach to strategic human resource management (SHRM) embedded in action research reflective and cyclical processes.…”

Collaborative research for sustainable learning: the case of developing innovation capabilities at Volvo Cars

“…This article provides insights into the design of a collaborative research project in an automotive company, enabling mutual sustainable learning through a focus on developing the capabilities for innovation. There are relatively few attempts in the literature to apply action research to private organizations (Kocher, Kaudela-Baum, and Wolf 2011) and this paper will help to fill this void by providing an example of a collaborative, action research approach.…”