Intraorganizational Communication of Business Ideas

Information about the external environment is of great importance for future planning and strategic decision making, especially in geographically dispersed organizations. Employees who have direct contact with key actors external to the organization are an important source of novel information about the environment that cannot be obtained through data scanning by top managers. This type of knowledge contributes to the top managers’ existing knowledge about the environment. However, novel information from employees can be ignored by top managers because they have biases in attention selection and decision making. In addition, top managers need to provide employees with satisfactory feedback to motivate them to continue sharing information. Hence, we study the design of an organizational system that helps top managers manage these challenges. The Idea Box at Handelsbanken is used as a single case study, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews. We conclude that information sharing from employees to top managers is likely to work well when there is a) an increase in the transparency of the system, b) reduction in the quantity of information and increase in the fit between expertise and the information received by top managers, c) increase in the probability and “information value” of the feedback from the top managers and d) a culture in the organization that fosters such behaviour from the employees.