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1. Introduction
Shifting the focus from a more traditional innovation approach toward democratizing the innovation process and involving non-experts has broadened the range of those who can contribute to innovation processes (Chesbrough, 2003; Von Hippel, 2005), as well as increased attention to the conceptual development of employee-driven innovation (EDI) (Høyrup, 2010). The concept of EDI stresses the active and systematic involvement of non-managerial employees in innovation processes, as their strong involvement in daily routines provides them with in-depth and contextual knowledge that is both unique and different from that of their managers (Kesting and Parm Ulhøi, 2010). In this way, employees are capable of making a contribution to innovation processes that strengthen an organization’s capacity to innovate (Kesting and Parm Ulhøi, 2010). Despite the admitted potential of employees in contributing to the innovation process, scholarly work on EDI remains limited (Bäckström and Bengtsson, 2019) and focused either on the conceptual development of employees’ capabilities or, when empirical in nature, dedicated to individual characteristics such as intrinsic motivation and well-being (Buech et al., 2010), self-efficacy (Frese et al., 1999) and organizational characteristics such as managerial support (Ramus and Steger, 2000), leadership behavior (De Jong and Den Hartog, 2007) and group climate (Axtell et al., 2000), as well as how these characteristics determine – that is, facilitate or impede – the success of EDI.
While researchers have acknowledged that individual characteristics such as self-efficacy, proactivity and ownership are important for EDI success, most studies of EDI still seem to endorse a traditional performance perspective, emphasizing the importance of organizational-level guidance and expecting employees to focus on submitting innovative suggestions within a given frame of action (Holman et al., 2012). In this perspective, individual agency in work processes that involve changing the frame of action remains reserved to managers and specialists (Virkkunen, 2006). In that sense, the current literature on EDI has taken only initial steps in developing an ontology of the emancipation of employees.
Within today’s fast-moving working environment, with its increasingly rapid technological developments, the need to emancipate employees and shift from the traditional view of their performance is being argued (Frese, 2008). Unlike the prevailing understanding of EDI, the concept of individual agency embraces the employee as an active agent who...