Innovative Behavior Model of Software Professionals

Abstract

Background: Innovation has been recognized as an important, if not essential condition to gain competitive advantage and survive in the software industry. From the initial moments of any innovation process, the company`s employees play an essential role. They are the ones who should engage in the search for opportunities as well as generate and implement new ideas. Their behavior towards innovation is called innovative behavior and it can be observed at different levels on each professional. Goal: The aim of this study is to build a model to explain which factors influence the innovative behavior of individuals in software development teams. To achieve higher explanatory power and close the gap of current researches, which are mostly based on quantitative data, this model was built grounded on deep analysis of rich qualitative and quantitative data. Method: A mix method research composed of a systematic literature review (SLR) and two industrial case studies were used to analyze the phenomenon of innovative behavior. The SLR analyzed 80 primary studies, from an initial set of 10.399 articles. The first case study was conducted on a small Canadian software firm, involving 2 projects and 6 participants, and its results were used to produce an initial model. The second case study was performed on a large Brazilian software organization, involving 8 projects and over 60 participants. Results: The resulting model, called IBMSW, confirmed several antecedents from previous models as well as proposed new antecedents of innovative behavior. In particular, the findings showed that the individual’s personality exert influence on individual’s innovative behavior and two competing explanations were identified. Conclusion: The results obtained provided explanatory power to the innovative behavior model as well as showed the importance to study such phenomena in the software industry. In addition, several recommendations for practitioners from different organizational levels were provided based on the IBMSW.