An Exploratory Approach of Managerial Innovation: From Distinctive Characteristics to Practice

Innovation is the engine of the development of organizations, it becomes a necessity in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (i.e VUCA World). Innovation covers products, services, and managerial practices by bringing novelty into the traditional management model making organization more resilient and agile. There are many studies related to managerial innovations however there is no devoted research to their intrinsic features, making thus their comprehension and adoption difficult. Also, to our knowledge there is no dedicated research investigating how the learning organization embodies a form of managerial innovation. Through a qualitative methodology centered on the content analysis of existing literature, our research aims to fill this gap by studying the main characteristics of managerial innovation, pointing out concrete managerial innovation practices, and examining the learning organization as an exemplary case of study. Our findings reveal the intangible, dynamic, and complex characteristics of managerial innovation, the impact of internal and external factors on the innovativeness of organizations and the significant overlap between the attributes of innovation and the learning organization ones. This research has both theoretical and practical implications, it provides an integrative theoretical framework of innovation and learning organization and serves as a foundation and practical tool for managers to adopt new practices by considering learning organization within the scope of managerial innovation. The study proposes a framework based on theoretical lens related to the learning organization and the diffusion of innovation, future research could develop a comprehensive empirical validation of the framework across diverse contexts.