A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Izold Guihur and Gilles Marcoux
order to develop their conceptualization competences, with praises for being creative, innovative, and
for questioning their own practices; d) the leader cultivates an individualized consideration of each
employee as he offers individual support and advice through coaching or mentoring (Bass and Avolio
1994). As a result, transformational leadership may become a powerful tool for the leader to augment
the employees’ satisfaction, commitment, trust, and to motivate them in out-of-role performance such
as innovation (Koreket al. 2010).
3. Organizational commitment of the employees
As introduced previously, organizational commitment refers to strengths that link an individual to a
specific line of conduct in order to achieve an objective (Vandenbergheet al. 2009). Because of a
certain set of attitudes, the person develops a psychological state that may orient his behaviours in a
positive manner towards his organization (Meyer et al., 2002), his group and immediate superior (Ben
Mansour et al.2009), or the customer service (Elmadaget al. 2008). For the purpose of this paper,
only the organizational commitment of the employees is being examined for it encompasses
beneficial effects on the personnel retention, the productivity and the organizational performance
(Fabiet al. 2010; Paul and Anantharaman 2003).
According to Meyer et al. (2002), organizational commitment includes three main forms. First, the
affective commitment concerns an unconditional commitment of the individual for the organization’s
business. The employee responds positively to the organization’s requests and deploys all the
required efforts for he gains great satisfaction in fulfilling the objectives of an organization to which he
is emotionally attached. The individual bears the interests of the organization in his decisions and
actions (Vandenberghe, et al. 2009). Second, the normative commitment refers to the moral
obligation that an individual feels towards his organization. Once again, the employee responds
positively to the organization’s request, but in this case, it is because he may feel a heavy moral
dissatisfaction if he does not do so. Normative commitment is based on a set of normative pressures
that are interiorized by the individual, and that bring him to commit to the organization’s business
because of moral duties (Vandenbergheet al. 2009). Third, the calculated commitment of an
individual is based on his evaluation of the relative risks or costs related to not committing to the
organization’s business. The employee prefers to remain in the organization to avoid greater
perceived losses or risks if he were to leave. Organizational commitment becomes instrumental as
the individual will responds to the organization’s request with the minimum effort required
(Vandenberghe et al.2009).
Affective commitment is regarded as the preferred kind of organizational commitment for it exerts the
most impact on the organizational functioning compared to the normative and the calculated
commitments and may better explain the improvement in the employees’ performance and that of the
organizations (Fabiet al., 2010; Paul et Anantharaman, 2003). In fact, the affective commitment refers
to a subjective attachment of the employee for the organization, to his identification with the
organization, to the sharing of its values. Affective commitment represents a strong prediction of
several behaviours (on the part of the employee) that are favourable to the organization. It
corresponds to an accrued will from the employees to achieve their prescribed tasks but also to do
more and beyond their tasks (Meyer et al. 2002).
3.1 Mobilizing levers: Competence development and empowerment
According to Fabiet al. (2010), human resource practices related to the development of the
employees’ competences and their empowerment represent important levers to mobilize the
personnel, to build up their satisfaction and their commitment. Indeed, both competence development
and empowerment augment the autonomy of the employees, nourish their feeling of being supported
by their organization, and enhance their feeling of an equitable treatment. As a result, competence
development and empowerment raise the employees’ will to actively commit towards their
organization (Malhotraet al. 2007).
The development of competences corresponds to learning activities, formal or informal, that aim at
improving the employees’ competences (St-Onge et al. 2009). Formal activities include the training of
the employees, generally targeting technical and interpersonal skills required to accomplish their
tasks (Paul and Anantharaman 2003). Informal activities, on the other hand, involve coaching
activities, at the executive or at the managerial levels (Agarwalet al. 2009). At the executive level,
coaching aims at developing specific skills of a manager with the help of an external consultant or that
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