Critical success factors for employee suggestion schemes: a literature review

Abstract

Employee suggestion schemes have existed for many years and numerous articles on this subject have been published over the last several decades. These schemes have been studied from many perspectives to illustrate their objectives, nature, content, processes, significance and benefits. Arguments have been made with respect to successes and failures of suggestion schemes. Although organizations widely use suggestion schemes to elicit the creative ideas of their employees, sustaining an effective suggestion scheme is still a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to extract critical success factors and critical success criteria to suggestion schemes and to discuss the importance of these factors on suggestion system sustainability. This is a literature review paper. It identifies 23 critical success factors and 9 critical success criteria for suggestion schemes. It also discusses the interconnection between critical success factors and critical success criteria. Further, the frequency of each of the factors is also presented. It recognizes the lack of work on assessment frameworks for suggestion scheme sustainability. This paper should be of value to practitioners of suggestion schemes and to academics who are interested in knowing how this program has evolved, where it is today and what future it holds. It offers practical help to an individual starting out on research on sustainability of suggestion schemes.