Examining Innovation Management from a Fair Process Perspective

Companies nowadays still differ considerably in that they interact with employees. This interaction depends on different organisational cultures, leadership styles, and the ways in which information and communication take place. A recent trend, even in economic theory, is that interactions are valued in themselves and not solely to achieve rational economic maximisation. People care about outcomes, but they also care about the interactional processes that produce those outcomes.

Thomas Limberg investigates a new approach to the management of human relationships in a knowledge-based work environment and analyses the relationship between fair process and innovation performance. Key findings are that social interactions have a significant influence on execution performance in organisations, and fairness can have positive effects on innovative behaviour and therefore on innovation performance. In the transition from a production-based to a knowledge-based economy, fair process is becoming a powerful tool for managing human interactions and for influencing attitudes and behaviours that are so critical in reaching high innovation performance.