We often think of innovators as mavericks, unorthodox individuals against a collective status quo system. Innovation comes to stand for freedom, flexibility and creative thinking, while organisational and formal controls are viewed as barriers that restrict those qualities.
But a new study co-authored by UCL School of Management Associate Professor Dr Vivianna He argues that these formal controls do not necessarily hinder innovation. In fact, when employees actively engage with and challenge new controls, their resistance can help create formal systems that support innovation rather than constrain it.
Recently accepted for publication in the Academy of Management Journal, the paper examines the case study of a large chemicals manufacturer and how it transformed its innovation process over a five-year period.
After decades of growth, the manufacturer experienced stagnation in 2005 because of global digitalisation. After years of failed attempts to speed up new product development, the organisation decided in 2014 to increase collaborative control of the organisation’s entire innovation process.
Rather than simply accepting or rejecting formal controls, workers at this company frequently challenged aspects they viewed as vague, impractical or disconnected from the realities of their day-to-day work. And by questioning how controls were designed and implemented, they helped managers improve and refine them.
The researchers describe this process as “productive resistance”. Instead of obstructing change, resistance became a source of valuable feedback that highlighted weaknesses in emerging systems and suggested ways to improve them.
Through interviews, observations and company documents, the authors tracked how innovation workers and managers collaborated over time to develop a more coherent set of controls governing innovation activities.
At the beginning of the study, the organisation relied on a relatively informal approach to innovation with limited oversight and inconsistent processes. Managers sought to introduce additional controls to improve transparency, accountability and coordination across innovation projects.
These efforts initially generated concern among employees, many of whom viewed the new measures as threats to their autonomy. However, workers did not simply resist the changes outright. Instead, many engaged with the new systems and pushed for modifications that would make them more useful and relevant.
The researchers found that employees contributed in several important ways. They helped clarify the purpose of controls, challenged where controls should and should not apply and influenced how strongly controls would be enforced.
As workers highlighted shortcomings and inconsistencies, managers adjusted rules, reporting systems, performance measures and innovation processes. Over time, individual controls became increasingly connected and aligned with one another.
This interaction between worker feedback and managerial response gradually transformed a collection of separate controls into an integrated innovation control system. According to the authors, this allowed the company to balance the need for oversight with the flexibility required for innovation.
The study challenges the common assumption that organisations must minimise resistance when introducing greater formalisation. Instead, the findings suggest that resistance can play a positive role when it helps identify problems and improve the design of controls.
The authors also argue that innovation strategies do not always emerge before control systems are introduced. At the chemicals manufacturer, efforts to formalise innovation activities helped stimulate wider discussions about strategic priorities and eventually contributed to the development of a clearer innovation strategy.
Vivianna He, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at UCL School of Management, said:
“Many people assume that innovation flourishes only when formal controls are kept to a minimum. Our study shows a more nuanced picture. We found that innovation workers often resisted new controls, but that resistance was not necessarily negative.
“By challenging controls that were unclear, incomplete or impractical, employees helped managers create systems that better supported innovation. Rather than being obstacles to change, workers became active contributors to building an innovation process that balanced autonomy with coordination and strategic direction.”
The paper, Innovating More Formally: How Resistance-Led Participation Drives Bottom-Up and Top-Down Expansion and Integration in Innovation Control Configuration, was co-authored by Shiko M. Ben-Menahem, Vivianna F. He, Georg von Krogh and Christian Wedl.
