\"Engineering organizations pursue innovation in strategy, structure, processes, and the services and products offered to remain relevant and competitive. Identifying factors supporting or constraining innovative work behavior and recognizing the complexity of their interactions are vital to sustaining an innovative workforce, yet how factors interact has not been comprehensively studied.
Recognizing innovative work behavior as the output of a complex system of factors guided this study’s literature search that identified over one hundred individual, team, and organizational factors influencing innovative behavior, interviews of engineers to learn what factors are essential in their work environment, and Delphi survey to rank factors, culminating in causal loop diagrams constructed to demonstrate that relationships between factors driving innovation could be modeled as a system.
For the engineering manager, recommendations include understanding how multi-level factor outcomes aggregate and the direction of their influence, and how lower-level effects transform and coalesce through synergies, negotiations, learning, or resistance as they work through and on the organization to create new, higher-level outcomes. And for the researcher, topics are offered for additional analysis, for example, how remote, distributed work may affect innovative behavior\"-- Abstract, p. iii
","abstract_html":"<p>"Engineering organizations pursue innovation in strategy, structure, processes, and the services and products offered to remain relevant and competitive. Identifying factors supporting or constraining innovative work behavior and recognizing the complexity of their interactions are vital to sustaining an innovative workforce, yet how factors interact has not been comprehensively studied.</p> <p>Recognizing innovative work behavior as the output of a complex system of factors guided this study’s literature search that identified over one hundred individual, team, and organizational factors influencing innovative behavior, interviews of engineers to learn what factors are essential in their work environment, and Delphi survey to rank factors, culminating in causal loop diagrams constructed to demonstrate that relationships between factors driving innovation could be modeled as a system.</p> <p>For the engineering manager, recommendations include understanding how multi-level factor outcomes aggregate and the direction of their influence, and how lower-level effects transform and coalesce through synergies, negotiations, learning, or resistance as they work through and on the organization to create new, higher-level outcomes. And for the researcher, topics are offered for additional analysis, for example, how remote, distributed work may affect innovative behavior"-- Abstract, p. iii</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Demski, Stephen"],"institution":"Missouri University of Science and Technology","degree_name":"Ph. D. in Engineering Management","degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":null,"date_issued":"","date_published":null,"updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:18:18Z","subjects":["Causal loop diagrams","factors influencing innovative behavior","individual innovative work behavior","innovative work behavior","systems thinking","team innovative work behavior","Engineering","Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations/3293","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Demski, Stephen"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Dissertation - Open Access"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph. D. in Engineering Management"]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["Missouri University of Science and Technology"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Causal loop diagrams","factors influencing innovative behavior","individual innovative work behavior","innovative work behavior","systems thinking","team innovative work behavior","Engineering","Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations/3293"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["\"Engineering organizations pursue innovation in strategy, structure, processes, and the services and products offered to remain relevant and competitive. Identifying factors supporting or constraining innovative work behavior and recognizing the complexity of their interactions are vital to sustaining an innovative workforce, yet how factors interact has not been comprehensively studied.
Recognizing innovative work behavior as the output of a complex system of factors guided this study’s literature search that identified over one hundred individual, team, and organizational factors influencing innovative behavior, interviews of engineers to learn what factors are essential in their work environment, and Delphi survey to rank factors, culminating in causal loop diagrams constructed to demonstrate that relationships between factors driving innovation could be modeled as a system.
For the engineering manager, recommendations include understanding how multi-level factor outcomes aggregate and the direction of their influence, and how lower-level effects transform and coalesce through synergies, negotiations, learning, or resistance as they work through and on the organization to create new, higher-level outcomes. And for the researcher, topics are offered for additional analysis, for example, how remote, distributed work may affect innovative behavior\"-- Abstract, p. iii
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Advancing a Systems Perspective on Innovative Behavior"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:creator":["Demski, Stephen"],"dc:description.abstract":["\"Engineering organizations pursue innovation in strategy, structure, processes, and the services and products offered to remain relevant and competitive. Identifying factors supporting or constraining innovative work behavior and recognizing the complexity of their interactions are vital to sustaining an innovative workforce, yet how factors interact has not been comprehensively studied.
Recognizing innovative work behavior as the output of a complex system of factors guided this study’s literature search that identified over one hundred individual, team, and organizational factors influencing innovative behavior, interviews of engineers to learn what factors are essential in their work environment, and Delphi survey to rank factors, culminating in causal loop diagrams constructed to demonstrate that relationships between factors driving innovation could be modeled as a system.
For the engineering manager, recommendations include understanding how multi-level factor outcomes aggregate and the direction of their influence, and how lower-level effects transform and coalesce through synergies, negotiations, learning, or resistance as they work through and on the organization to create new, higher-level outcomes. And for the researcher, topics are offered for additional analysis, for example, how remote, distributed work may affect innovative behavior\"-- Abstract, p. iii
"],"dc:identifier":["https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations/3293"],"dc:subject":["Causal loop diagrams","factors influencing innovative behavior","individual innovative work behavior","innovative work behavior","systems thinking","team innovative work behavior","Engineering","Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering"],"dc:title":["Advancing a Systems Perspective on Innovative Behavior"],"dc:type":["Dissertation - Open Access"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph. D. in Engineering Management"],"thesis:institution_name":["Missouri University of Science and Technology"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:18:18Z"}