Determinant Factors Affecting the Innovation within the Organization in a Remote Working Environment

Abstract

Organizational innovation is a pre-condition for the successful utilization of inventive resources and new technologies. Organizational innovation helps organizations to gain a competitive advantage over competitors. It is also can mean organizational adaptation and progression. Innovation has become a key factor for success of all the organizations. Business should learn how to embrace innovation to survive in their own market. Adopting innovation to business not only helps to achieve long term goals but create and achieve new ideas as well. Organizational innovation can also define as the core driving force of an organization as it has an impact on every aspect of the organization. As technologies have grown significantly over the past few decades, people have moved to use technologies more than before. Remote working in an organization has been popular for the last few decades. Remote working makes an environment for employees to work remotely. In other words, work outside of a traditional office environment. Compared to the past, most workers did not have experience in remote working and dealing with technologies. However, it has become a routine concerning the current pandemic situation. The Covid19 pandemic has been affected all the organizations around the world and also in Sri Lanka. Organizations have been facing severe ups and downs in their businesses and those who failed to adjust to changing environment had to face major loses. Due to this sudden pandemic, every organization forced to restructure their daily routine of work and most organizations have moved to remote employment. Many studies have researched how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the teleworking concept and how it affects organizational innovation. Even though there are many studies on determinant factors of innovation, they have not paid much attention to factors that affect organizational innovation in a remote working environment. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effect on innovation within the organization in a remote working environment in Information Technology Sector in Sri Lanka. The research approach planned to use for this study will be a quantitative approach. Determinant factors will be identified through analyzes of previous studies. A systematic review of the literature will be conducted to identify the gaps between the relevant studies. With the information gathered from previous studies and industry experts, questioners will be formulated. A survey is planned to be conducted across employees in executive level and managerial level in Information Technology service-providing organizations in Sri Lanka. Analytical tools and statistical software will be used to analyze the variables gathered from the survey. Determinant factors affecting organizational innovation will be measured after the analysis of the survey results. By using appropriate techniques and tools, the gathered data will be tested and validated. Finally, a model will be developed with the factors identified through this study. This study will provide guidelines to identify factors affecting organizational innovation in IT-based organizations in Sri Lanka and help businesses to improve their business performance.