We define management innovation as the invention and implementation of a management
practice, process, structure, or technique that is new to the state of the art
and is intended to further organizational goals. Adopting an intraorganizational
evolutionary perspective, we examine the roles of key change agents inside and
outside the organization in driving and shaping four processes—motivation, invention,
implementation, and theorization and labeling—that collectively define a model
of how management innovation comes about.