Mindful infrastructure as antecedent of innovation resilience behaviour of project teams: Learning from HROs
ISSN: 1352-7592
Article publication date: 17 July 2018
Issue publication date: 30 October 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether insights into high reliability organizations (HROs) are useful for innovation management teams. HRO teams can keep failure to a minimum level due to high alertness and resilience. Project teams working on innovation management could benefit from HRO principles and thus reduce their chances of failure.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey among in total 260 team members and team leaders of project teams in innovation management was conducted to study the relation between, on the one hand, organizational features of HROs (“mindful infrastructure”) and HRO principles (adjusted as “innovation resilience behaviour”, IRB), and on the other hand, between mindful infrastructure and IRB and project outcomes.
Findings
From the results it could be concluded that mindful infrastructure associates with IRB, and that IRB has a mediating role in the relation between mindful infrastructure and project outcomes. Innovation management project teams can thus learn from the practice of HRO teams.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, HRO-thinking has not been applied to team behaviour in innovation management. A fruitful transfer of insights from the domain of safety and crisis management seems applicable to the domain of innovation.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and Fliss Bage (Proof-reading-service.com) for proofreading the text. This paper is an extended and improved version of a paper presented at IWOT 20 – International Workshop on Team Working – “Team Learning and Resilience”, Open University of the Netherlands, Utrecht (Netherlands), 8-9 September 2016, and of Chapter 3 in Oeij 2017.
Citation
Oeij, P.R.A., Van Vuuren, T., Dhondt, S., Gaspersz, J. and De Vroome, E.M.M. (2018), "Mindful infrastructure as antecedent of innovation resilience behaviour of project teams: Learning from HROs", Team Performance Management, Vol. 24 No. 7/8, pp. 435-456. https://doi.org/10.1108/TPM-09-2017-0045
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited