مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Imagine being faced with the difficult challenge of maintaining, repairing, and overhauling aircraft that are being flown well beyond their programmed life cycles, while simultaneously dealing with personnel and budget cuts. This confluence of events has encouraged U.S. Air Force leadersto increase efficiency while preserving the same, or even improving, levels of performance. Fortunately, when implemented and sustained, management innovation has generated significant improvements in multiple measures of operational performance. However, many business leaders have experienced difficulty in diffusing innovation internally, and much more difficulty in diffusing innovation externally, causing some to wonder if they were on a fool’s errand. Even though implementation, and to a larger extent incorporation, of management innovation may be difficult, herein we demonstrate that it is not beyond the art of the possible. As such, the purpose of this article is to examine the mechanisms through which management innovation is diffused throughout an organization and provide recommendations to facilitate successful management innovation diffusion.

Notoriously, efforts to implement management innovation within and across organizations are met with resistance, reluctance, or ambivalence, and more often than not fade away (Price, 2014; Thompson, 1965). This phenomenon occurs even when the innovation identified for implementation iswell known and has been recognized and awarded in other organizations. Surprising to some, resistance may occur even when organizations are essentially mandated to adopt and implementthese innovations.

Why are implementation efforts seemingly so difficult? Why are organizations often seen as barriers to innovation (Van de Ven & Rogers, 1988)? Below, we present three typical issues associated with the implementation of management innovation.