Successful organizations require cohesive teams to work together to promote the vision and mission of the organization. Nevertheless, due to various factors such as hierarchical structures and fear and intimidation in the workplace, employees may exhibit signs of lack of satisfaction at work and in turn, lowered productivity. Spector (2010) , therefore, introduced mutual engagement and shared diagnosis within the workplace settings to facilitate cohesiveness, mutual understanding, which leads to productivity and in turn, increases revenues for an organization or business. This essay will, therefore, select a common organizational framework that can be used to shape mutual understanding and sharing diagnosis to determine NASA's effectiveness in implementing an open innovation system.
For effective change within an organization, leaders require to change management skills as well as learning the concepts behind mutual engagement and shared diagnosis, which makes the process easier and efficient. According to studies, 70% of organizational change initiatives fail to meet their objectives based on hindrances from both external and internal factors ( Eldor & Vigoda-Gadot, 2017). Leaders should, therefore, consider both external and internal factors to minimize resistance to change from the employees within the organization. Consequently, Eldor and Vigoda-Gadot (2017), suggested that shared diagnosis refers to the spread of information regarding change within the organization to maximize participation and support for the proposed solution.
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According to research, open innovation refers to the art of developing strategies that promote openness and dialogue within organizations to maximize support for change ( Lifshitz-Assaf, 2014) . The organization, therefore, incorporated a strategic approach towards mutual understanding identified as dialogue, which allows for free communication channels for employees. Research suggests that creating dialogue in a hierarchical organization may prove challenging based on various factors which should be critically evaluated ( Spector, 2010) . Nevertheless, leadership styles within an organization are crucial in facilitating dialogue based on the fact that they formulate environments that encourage and allow for open and candid employee conversations, therefore, minimizing organizational silence. According to Lifshitz-Assaf (2017), NASA conducted studies to evaluate the most effective approach to ensure open innovation over an extended period due to various factors such as employee resistance.
As mentioned, NASA conducted comprehensive research with regards to implementing open innovation strategies to manage change effectively. The results concluded that the model was useful since solutions were achieved with ease with minimal challenges. Similarly, the open channels of communication allowed for a decentralized decision-making body and in turn, the identification of various organizational problems which may have been unidentified due to organizational silence. Nevertheless, according to Lifshitz-Assaf (2017), out of NASA's fourteen identified organizational difficulties, the first year of the open innovation registered effective solutions to three problems.
Despite employee involvement in identifying the problems and developing solutions for the organizational issues, NASA's researchers found that the implementation of the solutions faced resistance and lack of support from various employees. Several months of delayed solution implementation by the internal solutions teams within the Organization based on fear of being dispensable consequently delayed productivity hence the need for effective solutions. Employees associated the external development of solutions by employees and the management with the loss of relevance and hence unwilling to implement the proposed solutions. This then led to in-depth research that was aimed at providing a solution for employee resistance.
The studies found that the employees considered themselves to be innovators and were thus rewarded for their innovative contributions ( Lifshitz-Assaf, 2018) . According to the scholar, an innovator is an individual who identifies a problem and therefore creates and implements a solution. Crowdsourcing solutions were, therefore, a provocative factor as NASA's internal innovators felt threatened and hence failed to identify their purpose and relevance, thus the prolonged resistance. However, scholars propose that allowing dialogue in such situation will hinder organizational silence, which was practiced for an extended period among NASA's internal innovators ( Lifshitz-Assaf, 2018) . Dialogue should further involve delayering or decentralizing hence finding a solution to the resistance.
Another solution described by scholars involves delayering the job description of the specific employees in question ( Spector, 2010) . In NASA's case, identifying the internal innovators as internal solution seekers would allow them to expand their boundaries and hence the ability to outsource or crowdsource information. This expands their professional value to reach an overall diverse value based on the fact that it fails to limit the source of their solutions but instead allows for a diverse range of sources and services to be used. Communicating such events to the employees would effectively reduce resistance and allow for the success of the open innovation strategy.
Applying Mutual Engagement
Using an organizational framework that begins with an evaluation of the environment, the people, and internal factors such as rewards and culture. An assessment of the environment leads to evaluation of the workers, their tasks, and benefits to the organization. Similarly, it further evaluates the organization's benefits to the employees as well as the workplace environment and incentive programs developed. The diagnostic framework would, therefore, prove useful in reducing employee resistance to change in the case of NASA.
Beginning with mutual engagement, the model proposes the use of dialogue to minimize organizational silence. Furthermore, a dialogue is initiated by the corporate leaders through creating environments that facilitate open conversations. This then allows for psychological safety, which in turn, is defined as the ability for employees to participate freely in dialogue hence take both personal and professional risks during such conversations ( Spector, 2010) . Creating such zones enables employees to feel protected from career threats and therefore formulate sustainable mutual engagement and thus participation and support. In the case of NASA, creating a psychologically safe environment would ensure job guarantee for the internal innovators and therefore allow for fast and efficient implementation of solutions due to lack of resistance.
Similarly, the organization may consider delayering hierarchical structures that may limit communication within the company and therefore promote openness and in turn, promote the identification of underlying organizational problems. Moreover, status differentials were identified as the critical factor promoting employee resistance in NASA based in the fact that the internal employees' status failed to reflect their job description and thus the fear of losing their positions. Scholars have identified this as egalitarianism, which has proven effective over time ( Spector, 2010) . In conclusion, this text has evaluated the effectiveness of NASA's process of implementing the open innovation strategy using the diagnostic framework. Similarly, there were evident barriers to the successful implementation of open innovation. Nevertheless, using the diagnostic framework may have revealed different results based on the fact that the model focuses on changing employee perception through dialogue and involvement in the proposed processes.
References
Eldor, L., & Vigoda-Gadot, E. (2017). The nature of employee engagement: Rethinking the employee–organization relationship. The International Journal of Human Resource Management , 28 (3), 526-552.
Lifshitz-Assaf, H. (2014). From problem solvers to solution seekers: dismantling knowledge boundaries at NASA. Available at SSRN .
Lifshitz-Assaf, H. (2017). Dismantling knowledge boundaries at NASA: From problem solvers to solution seekers. Administrative Science Quarterly .
Lifshitz-Assaf, H. (2018). Dismantling knowledge boundaries at NASA: The critical role of professional identity in open innovation. Administrative science quarterly , 63 (4), 746-782.
Spector, B. (2010). Implementing organizational change: Theory into practice . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Retrieved from https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/243200/sp/15457709/mi/50386632/toc?cfi=%2F4&sidebar=true
