Innovation Through Communication in an Educational Bureaucracy

Abstract

Communication between people from diverse organizational units can facilitate innovation. Employees of a postsecondary educational institution were interviewed to obtain specific incidents of when they tried to solve problems innovatively. The results indicate that employees with cooperative goals, but not those with competitive and independent goals, communicated openly and skillfully, made progress in solving the problem, developed high-quality and creative solutions, efficiently used their resources, felt positive about the experience, and expected to work with others successfully in the future. The predominant reason given for cooperative goals was common objectives. The results suggest that cooperative goals complement the skillful communication of diverse perspectives to foster innovation in an organization.