Organisational Innovation in the Danish Private Business Sector

This paper reviews the first results from a large Danish survey on organisational innovation within the private business sector. The 1,900 surveyed firms are divided in two groups of an almost equal size according to whether or not they have undertaken organisational innovation during the period of 1993-95, i.e. innovative Y-firms and non-innovative N-firms. It appears that the Y-firms to a larger extent than the N-firms employ various types of work organisational principles that facilitate intraorganisational integration and the delegation of authority. The Y-firms find themselves in more competitive environments and are more focussed on the global market than the N-firms and do, to a larger extent, employ functional flexibility and combine technical and organisational innovation in order to meet this challenge. However, 1/3 of the N-firms display organisational characteristics very similar to the Y-firm, and it is hypothesised that this fraction which amounts to approximately 1/7 of the total sample comprises firms which have innovated organisationally in the past, i.e. before 1993. Finally, Y- and N-firms have in common the fact that they have intensified their cooperative relationships with customers and subcontractors. This paper was originally prepared for The Second Meeting of the Nordic Group on Flexible Enterprises, held at Aalborg University, 29-30 August 1996. The data were made available by Frank Skov Kristensen and Kenneth Jørgensen at the Department of Business Studies who performed the necessary computer runs. Comments from Poul Thøis Madsen at the Department of Business Studies are gratefully acknowledged.