Self-engagement in employee suggestion systems : an empirical study using a multilevel approach​

In recent years internal innovation projects have been implemented in a series of organizations. It has been shown that innovation projects raise employee satisfaction and sense of belonging to the firm and increase employees' serendipity. In addition, they stimulate the knowledge diffusion within the Company and between the operational function. Some theories suggest that organizational structure can limit good communication or good implementation of some business practices. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how the employees' choice to participate (and the quality participation) in the employee suggestion system is affected by different organizational circumstances. We study two different phases of an employee suggestion system realized in an international company, through the identification of three different organizational levels and the comparison between them. We conducted 23 in-depth interviews and classified employees based on their level of participation in the project. The employees' perceptions and the real implementation of the project were compared with the opinions of those who designed the project in order to determine whether the coherence between the organizational levels were adequate to understand the behavior of employees. Our results show that proper communication between the various levels and a proper implementation of the project within the organization affects positively employees’ participation in the employee suggestion system. The research highlights the importance of certain organizational dynamics, and it advises to pay more attention to the handover in the communication phase and in the implementation phase of an innovation project when participation is spontaneous.