The Impact of an ODI on Employee Inter-functional Coordination and Synergy to Foster Innovation: A Case Study

With the changing business environment have come environmental forces alerting organizations to foster innovation as a way to survive the turbulent situation and thrive with accessible opportunities. Organization development interventions (ODI), which focus on the human social system of an organization have gradually gained acceptance as mechanisms needed for organizational vitality. In addition, market orientation has been well documented in the literature as the key provenance of organizational innovation. However, while most studies have investigated the relationship between the three market orientation elements - customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination with organizational innovation - this research focuses on determining the impact of an ODI on the improvement of employee inter-functional coordination and employee synergy in order to foster innovation in a multinational subsidiary organization which operates without the governance of a single authority. The research process follows an Action Research model. The results indicate that the planned ODI had a significant impact on the improvement of employee inter-functional coordination and synergy, while having some marginal impact on the improvement of innovation. This research also identified a positive relationship between employee inter-functional coordination and employee synergy and innovation within the organization