Analysis
Organizational innovation or creativity refers to implementation of a new and creative idea that can help in maximizing the potential growth of an organization. Creativity on various levels of an organization happens to work as a prerequisite for bringing innovative changes in that business. In this context, it can be mentioned that there are many organizational barriers that hinder the increased use of creativity in the workplace. For example, lack of trained and creative employees and creative leaders can affect the promotion of innovation in any company. Thus, this study has focused on organizational innovation and its role in increasing business performance in the context of the Omani company namely Arabian Industries. The main focus of this study is to illuminate the role of organizational climate and support in the promotion of innovation. Moreover, a brief plan has been elaborated that can be useful for the above mentioned company in initializing innovation with the help of organizational support.
Arabian Industries is an Omani company, located in Saudi Arabia. This organization works as a mechanical service provider that provides products and services to oil and gas industry and infrastructure industry (arabian-industries.net, 2018). The company has been running for last 24 years and has been continuing in taking various construction related projects like piping erection, mechanical maintenance, structure fabrication and more. The company claims that it is one of the best construction service provider globally that has its own subsidiary company namely KMS Limited. Arabian Industries has over 200 experienced and qualified employees and has a wide range of qualified technical staff (arabian-industries.net, 2018). One of the most important characteristics of this firm is that Arabian Industries has been equipped with a vast range of construction related machinery. Moreover, organizational innovation has always been an important look out of this organization while providing superior solution in the construction sector.
A major part of Organizational creativity depends on the overall organizational support the company gets. In this regard, this can be added that organizational climate or culture helps in the creation and implementation process of any innovative decision making of a company. According to Dawson and Andriopoulos (2014), organizational climate includes the behavioral environment of an organization that revolves around its employees. Thus, both individual and group support is important in turning any innovative idea into reality (Arshi, 2012). Arabian industries, with the help of their efficient employees, have always tried to give creative solutions to mitigate needs of their clients through providing innovative products and services. On the contrary, it has been noticed that the clients require fast delivery of services that hinders the creative thinking process as it takes time.
Background of the Company
Apart from employee involvement in coming up with innovative ideas, the role of leadership is also very important in facilitating the innovative changes in the organizational atmosphere. As mentioned by Anne Loewenberger, Newton and Wick (2014), unlike ordinary leadership, creative leadership helps in motivating the employees so that they get encouraged to come up with new creative ideas for the betterment of the organization they work on. For example, Arabian industries has been known for taking challenging projects from all over the world so that the monotony of and work pressure get diverted and as a result, excellent performances can be generated.
On the other hand, human resource management of Arabian industries plays an important role in implementing innovation and creativity in the organizational setting. For that reason, the human resource of team of this company provides adequate training to its employees for turning them into professional construction experts. Additionally, the organization uses attribute dependency strategy through which the HR department makes a list of attributes related to external environment and the HR team in order to their contribution in the innovation and creativity in their services (Shipton et al. 2016). Moreover, the HR department has initiated a safety environment program that promotes employee safety in the workplace so that the employees can work with full intensity in this organization.
Organizational creativity and innovation has a vital role in the business world of this decade that goes through continuous ups and downs and faces a serious market competition as many SMEs are being established rapidly. Thus, companies like Arabian Industries has been investing their efforts and capital on the implementation process of new business methods to handle organizational practices. In order to be more specific, Arabian industries has implemented new management strategies such as business merger strategy. In this regard, this can be mentioned that innovation and creativity are very important mediums for injecting value among its employees in a rapidly changing business environment (arabian-industries.net, 2018). This is more significant in organizations like Arabian industries that provide a wide range of services and products.
As mentioned above, creative individuals can come up with new and productive ideas but that can only be possible with the help of effective training (Loewenberger, 2013). As a result, the organization can maximize the utilization of the available machineries to manufacture a wide range of products with the help of creative and innovative problem solving methods. According to Urbancova (2013), theory of continuous innovation supports the fact that no organization is expected to generate a continuous success over a long period of time because this is impossible to sustain in practice. On the contrary, this theory sides with the fact that organizations that show an ability of learning from the failures but to never cease the innovative approach.
Role of Organizational and Group Support for Bringing Innovation
New steps can be implemented in the organization in order to enhance the use and utilization of both individual and organizational creativity in Arabian industries. According to Schneider, Ehrhart and Macey (2013), the organizational leaders can give challenging tasks to the employees so that their potentials can be maximized. In this context, this can be added that resource cognition can work as a facilitator of organizational innovation process. In this regard, this can be mentioned that the whole organizational support is needed in enhancing the role of innovation in product manufacturing and in delivering to the clients. For that reason, the employees need to be allowed to make individual decisions that can be acted upon by them.
Conclusion
In order to conclude, this can be said that after the evaluation of the organization, this has been found that the chosen organization has implemented innovative changes that helped them in coming up with consistent creative solutions to mitigate client needs. On the other hand, it has also been found that there are several areas where new strategies can be implemented in order to maximize organizational support in enhancing organizational creativity. As per the evaluation of the organization, this has been identified that continuous innovation is capable of helping the company in its continuous and effective improvement. On the other hand, the process of innovation can be enhanced with the help of a kind of organizational culture that supports the growth of innovative employees and managers. Innovation plays an important role in keeping the sustainability and stability of an organization for a very long time. Moreover, this study has explained the role of organizational culture and environment in the promotion of innovation in the chosen company.
Organizations belonging to construction sector such as the chosen company can implement innovation in various ways. For example, the organization can invest more in innovative techniques related to production of goods. Along with that, the company can increase the chances or scopes for innovation by lowering the production costs and buy making the delivery process faster. In addition, the aim of organizational climate of Arabian industries need to be helping employees in enhancing personal growth by promoting value of integrity and honesty. On the other hand, the organization can use procurement strategy that includes an increased role of the customers and an integrated type of supply chain (ice.org.uk, 2018). Moreover, the organization can use new technologies like sensors, BIM and more that can help in managing the assets of the organization.
On the other hand, the human resource managers can take actions in order to deal with employee burn outs. This is more significant for Arabian industries because here the workload is heavy and employees have to give their full concentration in their work to avoid any physical risk in the workplace. In opinion of Wallace, Hunt and Richards (1999), the organizational culture needs to be easy going and flexible so that individuals can come up with innovative ideas and can feel free to share them with their superiors. Apart from that, many innovative strategies can be used to promote innovation such as design thinking (Brown and Martin, 2015). Companies like Google has seen success with the help of this innovative strategy that helped them understand the client needs and how to satisfy them creatively.
Reference list
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