Studies on the characteristic elements of organizational innovation and innovation path: Cognitive and learning perspectives

“How to realize organizational innovation” has become an important issue confronted by existing organizational behavior researchers and practitioners. This study attempts to answer this question from two perspectives, cognition and learning. Questionnaire was adopted in the research. Through a survey of 339 employees, the innovation path for characteristic element structure at different levels of organizational innovation has been analyzed. The research contents and empirical results include, firstly, analysis of characteristic elements at different levels of organizational innovation from cognitive and learning perspectives; secondly, proposal of innovation path structured by characteristic elements of organizational innovation based on organizational cognition and learning theory, which is adopted as the conceptual model of the study; finally, conclusion of four paths, based on the questionnaire sample data to realize organizational innovation through application of structural equation modeling, among which the “individual innovation quality and tendency → innovative atmosphere → knowledge-based organization → organizational innovation” is the most effective and the “black box” - the mechanism of realizing organizational innovation, is opened. These results not only provide strong support to organizational cognition and learning theories, but also provide a good research perspective and basis for subsequent study, which are of important reference value to the practice of enterprise management, as well.