Malevolent innovation: A synthesized theoretical model and a measurement tool.

WAOP 2023 Abstract Submission
Malevolent innovation – a synthesized theoretical model and a measurement tool
Yiting Wang, Eric F. Rietzschel, Barbara Wisse
University of Groningen

Malevolent innovation is the generation, championing, and implementation of creative ideas in the awareness that these are –or could be– harmful to individuals, organizations, and/or broader society. In organizations, malevolent innovation can take the form of, for example, the introduction of dangerous new products, creative ways to circumvent important rules, or novel ways to manipulate or coerce others. Although innovation is usually seen as benign and valuable, innovation can jeopardize the well-being, organizational commitment, and work performance of employees, and can lead to financial loss, societal disturbance, and/ or civilian casualties when it is malevolent in nature. Due to the adverse impact of malevolent innovation, there is an urgent need to fully understand, measure, and mitigate it.
Existing research in this area has focused on malevolent creativity, the mere generation of creative but malevolent ideas. The process of how such malevolent ideas get turned into harmful behaviors or products in organizations has not yet been empirically investigated. To fill this gap and stimulate future research, this project is aimed at developing a measurement instrument, the Malevolent Innovative Behavior scale (MIBS). First, we employed a deductive approach to generate items that capture malevolent innovation. Second, based on two content validity studies with 14 field experts and 92 novice raters, we selected and, in some cases, rephrased items. In a third study, 300 employees responded to the MIBS. Results showed that the MIBS had a good internal consistency and good levels of structural validity according to exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The final scale contains 15 items, with 5 items for each sub-factor (generation, championing, implementation). All in all, we believe that the present research offers a valid measurement tool for malevolent innovation, which will advance theory and serve as a starting point for future empirical studies in the field.

Word Count: 298 words
Keywords: malevolent innovation, theoretical model, scale development