INNOVATIONS AMONG PEOPLE. HOW POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK CAN TRIGGER INNOVATION CREATION

Innovations are the essence of the successful organization. The process of their creation is strongly based on individual and team commitment to create improvements in every organizational area. This commitment is triggered by innovation climate including employee positive relationships (PRW) and supporting internal communication facets. The aim of the paper is to define causal relations among the aforementioned variables. We hypothesize that positive relationships at work are a prerequisite of the innovation creation process, i.e. they stimulate employee commitment to innovation creation regardless of the employee position in an organization as well as influence internal communication facets that support innovativeness. Notably, among internal communication elements we analyze open communication of both good and bad information and employee informal meetings. The analyses are based on the quantitative survey conducted on the sample of 200 Polish companies representing various sectors and selected from rankings of the most dynamically developing organizations in Central Europe. In each company we obtained information from a person involved in leading a team creating innovations, i.e. representing different functional departments. In the course of data analyses we used the hierarchical regression and the linear regression analysis. The results support the hypotheses of PRW key role in the innovativeness process, and the effect appeared to be linear. Specifically, positive relationships at work stimulate both employee individual commitment to innovations and internal communication supporting innovativeness. These findings contribute to the research stream connected with the Positive Organizational Scholarship umbrella concept. Practical implications of the survey point to the need of positive relationships at work stimulation in organizations.