Abstract:
This paper draws on a detailed case study of an innovation awards-giving scheme in a professional services firm to consider the role of discretionary awards in encouraging and displaying innovation capabilities. Because of their association with competition, it might seem that awards are likely tools in pluralistic contexts such as professional service firms where risk-taking and collaboration require deep relationships with clients and with professionals from different specializations. We intend to show how managers and professionals mobilized around the scheme using the rewarding, recognising, and ritualising of innovation through awards, as a platform to initiate and promote other organizational processes that foster innovation capabilities.
