Le climat de sécurité psychologique et de prise d'initiative, facteurs déterminants lors de la mise en place d'un processus innovant ?

Abstract

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the government of Wallonia want to stimulate the companies in Wallonia to innovate. Unfortunately, many companies have difficulties to do so. Only a small percentage of them are able to innovate successfully (Capozzi & Kellen, 2012). Researchers have studied this phenomenon and argue that process innovations, defined as deliberate and new organizational attempts to change production and service processes, need to be accompanied by climates that complement the adoption and implementation of such innovations (Baer & Frese, 2003). I decided to evaluate the climate of twenty teams in which a process innovation has been introduced, to various degrees of success. Different team climates that favor innovation have been described in the literature. I chose to assess two main climates for this thesis: psychological safety and initiative taking, and to study how our companies are stimulating these climates. The participants were asked to describe the factors that explain the success or failure of the implementation of the process innovation in their teams in order to know if climates are really the success factor that has the biggest impact. The conclusion of my work is that the importance of the success factors depends on the context of the company. In fact, climates can play a major role during the introduction of the innovation process, but companies can still compensate for unfavorable climates. They can support the adoption of the innovation process by allocating resources to overcome the resistances appearing in the organization and adapting the process to it.