Organizational innovation - a matter of concurrency

According to the OECD, organizational innovation is the implementation of a new organizational method, e.g. in the firm's workplace organization, but literature suggests that it is still widely unresolved on how to innovate the knowledge work organization in companies. Based on the analysis of twenty in-depth interviews with German managers in charge of work organization in their respective companies, this paper formulates a hypothesis that for the innovation of the work organization to be successful it requires a special sequence in the introduction of new organizational practices and therefore a special innovation management approach. Specifically, results presented here suggest that technology-related aspects of organizational innovations should not lag behind human-related aspects of work organizational innovations. A concurrent innovation method - by altering both dimensions simultaneously - might be even the most promising approach to organizational innovation.