Employee imagination and its implication for entrepreneurs : inspiration from Chinese business enterprises

Talat, U; Chang, K

Abstract

Purpose: In 2015 the European Group of Organisation Studies released a call for papers highlighting poor knowledge of employee imagination in organisations. To address this need, the current study hypothesises employee imagination consisting of seven conditions common to the organisational experience of Chinese Entrepreneurs.
Design/methodology/approach: The current paper reviews the Chinese enterprising context. Cases from China are used to illustrate the effects of proposed conditions and their value for entrepreneurs and innovators in businesses undergoing change.
Findings: Employee imagination underpins and conditions how Chinese employees make sense of their organisations and better understand the process of organisational change. From the viewpoint of human resource management, coaching and developing imagination enables businesses to stay competitive and adapt to environmental demands such as lack of information, too much information, or the need for new information.
Research limitations/implications: The proposed conditions apply to the Chinese context, however, their application to wider contexts is suggested and requires attention.
Originality/Value: Theoretically, our research adds new insights to knowledge of a poorly understood organisational behaviour topic – employee imagination. Practically, the research findings provide mangers with knowledge of conditions, which could be adopted as powerful tools in facilitating organisational change management.

Citation

Talat, U., & Chang, K. (2017). Employee imagination and its implication for entrepreneurs : inspiration from Chinese business enterprises. Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management, 8(2), 129-152. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHRM-06-2017-0012

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 9, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Sep 22, 2017
• Publication Date: Oct 9, 2017
• Deposit Date: Aug 17, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 11, 2017
• Journal: Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management
• Print ISSN: 2040-8005
• Publisher: Emerald
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 129-152
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHRM-06-2017-0012
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JCHRM-06-2017-0012
• Related Public URLs: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journal/jchrm