The passive reliance on ideas to spontaneously emerge within companies is today replaced with more active and continuous ideation management that embraces employees from different functions and knowledge-domains within the company to create and develop ideas. A frequently observed feature in the active management of ideation is the reliance on collaboration and competition mechanisms. These mechanisms use the strength of enabling people to working together towards a shared interest (collaboration) and the power of enabling people to outperform each other in submitting the best idea (competition). The existing research on collaboration and competition in ideation is found inconclusive about their effects as collaboration is stated to both enhance and hamper performance, and as competition is claimed to both drive and reduce performance in ideation. This constitutes a limitation to the management of ideation as it reduces the ability to actively and purposefully guide ideation through a deliberate use of the two mechanisms. The aim of this thesis is to investigate collaboration and competition mechanisms in firm-internal ideation. A multi-methodological approach has been deployed using three different studies: a multiple case study, a survey, and an experiment. This has allowed for the phenomenon of ideation to be studied using different perspectives and for the individual results to be triangulated. The empirical data has been acquired from both industry and experiments with university students. The conducted research has revealed that the inconsistencies on the effects from the two mechanisms are possible to understand and resolve by applying a more detailed level of analysis. When competition is decomposed into components of individual- and group competition, it is found that individual competition drives idea quantity and that it hampers collaboration, whereas group competition instead is found to induce collaboration and to nurture idea quality. This indicates that competition can be used to manage levels of collaboration in ideation, thereby bridging the two mechanisms. This thesis further presents that the individual effects from each of the mechanisms are complementary to each other. This implies that the effect from each mechanism is retained when combined with the other mechanisms, and that the combined effect is equal to, or even greater than, the sum of the individual effects. This combined use is found to drive both ideation efficiency and motivation, and is offering management an interesting third alternative, out of the two mechanisms, of how firm-internal ideation can be managed in a more effective and efficient manner. An analytical framework is included, presenting the interrelationships between the mechanisms, motivation, ideation behavior and the ideation performance. / <p>QC 20150831</p>

Cette thèse développe la théorie de l'identité en économie en utilisant les frontières de la firme pour étudier l'effet de l'identification à la firme sur la coopération intrafirme. Nous nous appuyions sur la définition de l'identité personnelle de John B. Davis et proposons un cadre théorique qui conceptualise la relation entre l'identité et la coopération. Dans ce cadre, l'identité personnelle est le produit du management des identités sociales qu'un individu développe et maintient au travers d'effort d'investissement dans ces identités. Nous utilisons les frontières de la firme pour distinguer les identités sociales qui sont liées à l'entreprise de celles qui ne le sont pas. Nous testons les prédictions théoriques avec des expérimentations de terrain dans de vraies firmes et avec leurs employés, et nous contrôlons l'effet des différents degrés d'affiliation à la firme, notamment en étudiant la coopération entre individus de deux firmes appartenant au même groupe. En cohérence avec la théorie, nous trouvons que l'affiliation à la firme a un impact positif et progressif sur la coopération dans un jeu de contributions volontaires. De plus, une plus grande distance sociale entre les individus implique moins de coopération. Notre stratégie théorique et expérimentale permet de surmonter les nombreuses critiques des approches en termes d'identité sociale. Elle rend compte de l'hétérogénéité des stratégies individuelles dans la gestion des identités sociales, l'impact des institutions sur le comportement individuel et la coopération intrafirme. L'identité personnelle ajoute à l'étude traditionnelle de l'identification à la firme les questions de l'individuation et de l'effet des identités sociales multiples. Nous identifions la structure de cette nouvelle approche du lien entre la cognition et la motivation dans la firme. Nous expliquons comment les questions de cette théorie étendue de l'identité sont liées aux questions centrales de la nature de la firme, de l'organisation interne et des frontières de la firme. Nous analysons les implications de l'inclusion de l'analyse de l'individuation et d’identités sociales multiples sur l'analyse de la coopération. Nous étudions également les effets de l'apprentissage et de la culture d'entreprise sur les stratégies identitaires dans la firme / This thesis develops the current theory on identity in economics to study the effect of individuals' identification with the firm on intrafirm cooperation by using the boundaries of the firm. We rely on the definition of personal identity given by John B. Davis to develop a theoretical framework that conceptualizes the relationship between identity and cooperation. In that framework, personal identity is the product of the management of the social identities that an individual develops and maintains through investment efforts in those social identities. We exploit firm boundaries to identify how social identities that are related to the firm can be distinguished from those that are not. We test the theoretical predictions by using framed field experiments involving real firms their employees, and we control the effect of different degrees of firm affiliation, notably by studying cooperation between individuals of two firms which are part of the same corporate group. We find that, consistent with theory, affiliation to firms has a positive and gradual impact on cooperation in voluntary contributions mechanism experiments. In addition, higher social distance among individuals implies less cooperation. Our theoretical and experimental strategy overcomes the numerous critiques of social identity approaches. It accounts for the heterogeneity of individual strategies as regards the management of their social identities, the impact of institutions on individual behavior as well as intrafirm cooperation. Personal identity adds to the traditional study of identification with the firm the questions of individuation and of the effect of multiple social identities. We identify the structure of this new approach to the link between cognition and motivation in the firm. We explain how the questions of this extended theory of identity are related to the central questions of the nature of the firm, of internal organization and of the boundaries of the firm. We analyze the implications of the inclusion of the analysis of individuation and multiple social identities concerning cooperation. We also study the effect of learning and corporate culture on identity strategies.