Their research explores how organisation members tactically share their ideas as a compromise between freedom and control.

In hierarchical organisations, many employees – at least those working outside of R&D departments – will think twice before offering their innovative ideas to the management. However, idea sharing can still take place in these organisations. It is likely to happen through a collective process of pre-screening. This was a key finding in a paper written by Siri Boe-Lillegraven (Strategy & International Business section) with co-authors Fanshuang Kong (Aarhus BSS) and Lynda Jiwen Song (Leeds University Business School). Their work was published in the journal Creativity and Innovation Management.

Specifically, the authors explore what they refer to as ‘heedful proactivity’. This is when organisation members selectively and gradually share ideas with trusted colleagues or supervisors to obtain validation or gain support. This idea is based on insights gathered from informants in 42 hierarchical firms. Its potential impact is relevant for organisations that want to promote creativity and innovation, but where flattening the hierarchy is either not desirable or achievable in the short to medium term.

Key findings about heedful proactivity

The article details key aspects of the proactive idea sharing behaviour found in organisations with a high degree of hierarchy and top-down control:

• Holistic prospective thinking: Employees don't only consider personal rewards but anticipate how their ideas might impact the organisation and peers. Concerns include potential envy or resistance from colleagues or supervisors, who may feel threatened or dismiss ideas as too risky.
• Risk hedging strategies: Employees use various tactics to minimise idea-sharing risks. Some may informally test ideas with peers or supervisors before presenting them formally. Timing and setting (such as sharing ideas during a casual lunch or in a formal meeting) play a crucial role in reducing the likelihood of rejection.
• Temporal Splitting: Idea-sharing is often broken into multiple steps. Employees may first gather feedback from colleagues to strengthen their idea before approaching supervisors, or they might present the idea as a collective team effort. This gradual approach allows them to minimise conflicts and ensure the idea gains traction at each level.
• Both/and approach to hierarchy and proactivity: Employees accept the hierarchical structure and advocate for formal mechanisms to promote proactivity, such as dedicated time and space for idea sharing. Suggestions include incorporating proactivity into performance indicators, offering extrinsic rewards like bonuses, and improving informal trust mechanisms (for example through team-building activities).

Pre-screening

Based on the above insights, the researchers develop the concept of pre-screening. This refers to collective action patterns geared towards qualifying individuals' innovative ideas before they are made subject to formal decision making. Although pre-screening is a collective mechanism, individuals in the organisation can covertly initiate and considerably shape pre-screening. This is done by orchestrating when and how others get to make sense of their suggestions. The researchers argue that pre-screening can help disseminate but also mould bottom-up initiatives before they reach the higher layers in the hierarchy. This possibly increases an ideas' potential for getting approved and implemented.

Practical implications

The paper offers managers a new perspective on how innovative ideas can be managed within hierarchical settings and how proactivity can be promoted even under strict governance. An optimistic perspective is that pre-screening can help balance autonomy and control, allowing managers to filter ideas in alignment with organisational priorities. This process encourages employees to refine and validate ideas at lower levels, improving quality while protecting potentially groundbreaking concepts from premature rejection.

A possible obstacle noted by the researchers is the pre-screening process is hard to observe, making it difficult to manage effectively. Managers may therefore have to strengthen the competencies related to being ‘first receivers’ of ideas. They will also need to improve peer-to-peer and supervisor-subordinate relations to ensure that ideas survive. Training in appropriate feedback responses can enhance the quality of pre-screening, enabling it to serve as a more effective sorting mechanism. Another way to support bottom-up innovation would be for executives to model the idea-sharing and receiving behaviour they would like to see in others.