The Ideas Competition as Tool of Change Management - Aspects of Triggering Ideas

With our action research approach at BMW Group Financial Services Germany we explore the application of an Ideas Competition as tool of Change Management and look into the effects of the competition on the organizational change. In this paper, we examine the nature of ideas forwarded in the Ideas Competition, the influence the Ideas Competition has on the creation and contribution of ideas and the role of awards from an employees’ perspective in the context of the change situation. Using predominantly the results of an online survey, we find an importance of the function of awards different from our expectations, we discover the trigger-effect of the competition on the development of ideas and we specify this effect in respect to the ideas’ origin being within or without the employees’ actual fields of function. Furthermore we indicate the high probability of ideas getting lost in the corporate environment.