Agility, Empowerment, and Innovative Work Behaviors

Abstract

Digital market disruption, changing consumer preferences, and the current COVID- 19 crisis require organizations to transform their business models and offerings. Especially large corporations face challenges in creating highly creative and innovative products and services. This case study analyzes the impact of an agile organizational structure on employee empowerment and the innovative work behavior in a large Scandinavian bank. The company transformed a strategic, technical unit to be self-organized two years ago and experienced increased efficiency and innovation as well as more playful and customer-centric solutions since implementation. Agile work methods use prototypes, testing, and customer feedback to ensure that the iterative innovation process creates valuable solutions for customers. The workload and number of open projects need to be limited to avoid adverse effects of high employee empowerment, especially burn out. Data from ten qualitative interviews show that increased autonomy and decentralization lead to higher levels of employee empowerment and innovative work behaviors.