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Employee-Driven Innovation Amongst ‘Routine’ Employees in the UK: The Role of Organizational ‘Strategies’ and Individual ‘Tactics’

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Employee-Driven Innovation

Abstract

Governments worldwide seek to upgrade the ‘basic skills’ of employees deemed to have low literacy and numeracy, in order to enable their greater productivity and participation in workplace practices. A longitudinal investigation of such interventions in the United Kingdom has examined the effects on employees and on organizations of engaging in basic skills programmes offered in and through the workplace. Through the ‘tracking’ of employees in selected organizational contexts, Evans and Waite (2010) have highlighted ways in which the interplay between formal and informal workplace learning can help to create the environments for employees in lower-grade jobs to use and expand their skills. This workplace learning is a precondition, a stimulus and an essential ingredient for participation in employee-driven innovation, as workers engage with others to vary, and eventually to change, work practices.

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© 2012 Edmund Waite, Karen Evans and Natasha Kersh

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Waite, E., Evans, K., Kersh, N. (2012). Employee-Driven Innovation Amongst ‘Routine’ Employees in the UK: The Role of Organizational ‘Strategies’ and Individual ‘Tactics’. In: Høyrup, S., Bonnafous-Boucher, M., Hasse, C., Lotz, M., Møller, K. (eds) Employee-Driven Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014764_8

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