Negative Consequences

In this encyclopaedia entry we will discuss the academic organisational innovation literature and the unsustainable practices it sustains. Unsustainable practices refer here to organizational innovation practices through which managers try to secure their corporations’ survival in the accelerating global competitive race, while giving little attention to how their solutions may affect stakeholders inside or outside the organisation. We examine unsustainable work practices by analysing how meaning is constructed around negative consequences of organisational innovation in research. More specifically, we argue that the academic OI literature strongly builds on a pro-innovation-bias. This has implied that mainstream OI research has neglected to address negative implications of innovation. Companies and their decision-makers therefore have little or no help from the organisational innovation literature in addressing practices that foster undesirable consequences. However, we will also discuss a marginalized body of literature which we have identified and refer to as ISNC (Innovation Studies of Negative Consequences). By analysing findings from ISNC we shed light on unsustainable IO practices. We will claim that to open up for alternative and more sustainable paths for innovation, there is a need to learn from ISNC and challenge the dominant innovation approaches in the OI literature. By doing to, OI studies could play a more transformative role for sustainable organising. This would be an important contribution from innovation research towards UN’s SDGs.