Towards research-based policy and practice of workplace innovation in Europe

Despite many positive examples, the dissemination of workplace innovation is still rather limited. The market mechanism is not in itself capable of delivering workplace innovation. This chapter discusses the likely reasons, and the need for policies and interventions by governments and social partners at European and national levels. Workplace innovation connects different policy agendas such as productivity, innovation, skills, digitalisation, quality jobs, social dialogue and the European Pillar of Social Rights. Workplace innovation policies do not take the form of ‘hard regulation’ such as legislation, but that of ‘soft regulation’ in its various forms. In the Finnish, German and Scottish cases discussed in this chapter, ‘learning network’ approaches appear to be fairly successful. There are more similarities than differences between the three cases, and the differences are mainly those of degree. Although strategic justifications differ slightly over time and between countries, the common rationale is that of rebalancing economic and innovation policies by embedding the complementarity of technological innovation and workplace innovation, emphasising the important role played by employee participation. These policies are being supplemented by action research, as well as research into possible scenarios. The chapter concludes with research questions regarding the determinants of managerial choices and the interplay between the innovation policy, the industrial relations system and the research system. A final category of research lies in better evaluation of programmes, including studies to identify long-term and indirect impacts of interventions, examining the extent to which they are able to create a sustainable momentum of change.