Motivating Creativity and Enhancing Innovation through Employee Suggestion System Technology

TLDR

Employee suggestion systems are valuable for capturing creative ideas, yet motivating participation remains a challenge because rewards alone are insufficient unless they are valued, linked to performance, and employees believe they can succeed. This paper applies expectancy theory to design a system that motivates employees to participate in suggestion systems. They propose a suggestion system technology that boosts motivation to think creatively and participate by aligning rewards with employees’ perceived value, performance linkage, and self‑efficacy.

Abstract

Research has found that employee suggestion systems are a useful way to obtain and utilize employees’ creative ideas. To be effective, employees must be motivated to think creatively and to participate in the suggestion system. Unfortunately, motivating employees to participate is a common weakness of suggestion systems. Motivating employees involves more than simply offering rewards to submitters if their suggestions are put to use. According to expectancy theory, rewards will only motivate behaviour if the rewards are valued, if they are closely linked to successful performance, and if employees believe that they can perform successfully. This paper applies expectancy theory to the problem of motivating employees to participate in a suggestion system. We describe suggestion system technology that will increase employees’ motivation to think creatively and participate in the system.