Assessing sustainability of employee suggestion schemes : Cases from the United Arab Emirates

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a sustainability assessment model and to discuss the implications for organizational learning. Paper presents a sustainability excellence model comprising of three stages and discuss the good practices for sustaining the employee suggestion scheme. Design/methodology/approach: The assessment framework was developed drawing on a thorough review of the literature and data collected and analyzed using various statistical tools. The developed assessment framework was validated through a case of an organization based in the United Arab Emirates. Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit relevant information during the case study. Findings: An assessment framework comprising five major factors for sustainability of suggestion scheme has been presented. The five factors include: leadership and work environment, system capability, system effectiveness, organizational encouragement and system barriers. Sustainability of a suggestion system can be understood as a three-stage model comprising the initial stage, the developmental stage and the advanced stage. The key practices associated for each of these stages are discussed in detail. Practical implications: The framework has taken into consideration the critical success factors and critical success factors emerged from the literature review conducted for this study. Therefore, the framework could be further refined by conducting more case studies and can propose maturity levels. Originality/value: The paper has developed a framework that can be used to assess the sustainability of the suggestion scheme in an organization. This model has been applied to assess the individual schemes and draw upon potential change strategies.

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