Coaching for Positive Organizations and Innovation Management

Dear Colleagues,

The purpose of this Special Issue is to link coaching to innovation management—which in turn will occur in positive organizations.

There are many pertinent questions in this field: Why are some countries and organizations less innovative? How may we change this paradigm?

The interest in innovation is increasing and the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, in 2025, was awarded to scholars of this topic.

Governments and leaders must aim for positive organizations where innovation occurs quite naturally due to the management and leadership approach. Executive coaching and mentoring—if executed well—may make a difference in achieving the above.

However, we are still left to ask questions:

• Albeit are all leaders and economic actors coachable?
• Are all people able to be coaches?
• What types of coach and coaching theory may best benefit specific types of economic actor and situation, for example in change averse national cultures?

An objective is to manage and lead positive organizations as regards innovation management, so essential today to the competitiveness of what need to be meritocratic organizations (promotions based on merit and competence rather than on friendships and relational capital).

Theoretical perspectives on coaching include, but are not limited to, the following areas: cognitive behavioural coaching, solution-focused coaching, person-centred coaching, gestalt coaching, existential coaching, ontological coaching, narrative coaching, psychological development coaching, transpersonal coaching, positive psychology coaching, transactional analysis coaching, and NLP coaching. Please see Cox et al. (2024) for a discussion of these.

Innovation management may involve open innovation (von Hippel, 2005), closed innovation, radical innovation, incremental innovation, product innovation, process innovation, organizational innovation, marketing innovation, and/or disruptive innovation. The approach adopted by the innovation manager is seen to be crucial for beneficial and positive innovation outcomes to occur.

Positive organizations are defined as those where constructive leadership enables subordinates to do their job in a safe, meritocratic environment (Graça & Au-Yong-Oliveira, 2024) focused on results rather than on personal conflict and power struggles (Au-Yong-Oliveira, 2022).

A significant part of the literature emphasizes the importance of coaching to achieve open and innovative organizations by striking a balance between performance indicators and employees’ as well as customers’ well-being (“Where do leaders lead us?”, 2009), alongside political, social and motivational factors that influence the organizational environment (Pulakos et al., 2019).

This innovative perspective ties into acknowledging the main elements of what it takes to become a “blue ocean” organization (one which makes the competition irrelevant), mainly the creation and application of feasible ideas (“Where do leaders lead us?”, 2009) along with its application in the market (Roffe, 1999). Here arises the necessity of a leader capable of not only motivating their employees, but also equipping them with proper tools to achieve organizational and personal goals within the task set (Pulakos et al., 2019; Roffe, 1999; “Where do leaders lead us?”, 2009) by developing training programmes according to each employee’s needs (Roffe, 2009) without letting organizational goals go unaddressed (Pulakos et al., 2019).

In this sense, it is important to, according to Pulakos et al. (2019), set specific performance goals and expectations to employees and peers along with constant feedback and to implement new performance management psychological and team-based models.

Managerial coaching, defined as supportive behaviour towards subordinates that aims to improve employees’ skills, competence, and performance, has been shown to positively influence innovative behaviour. Although the exact definition of innovation remains contested, there is broad agreement that it is a complex, multi-stage process involving the generation and implementation of new ideas for the benefit of the organization (Pajuoja et al., 2025). Similarly, Schindler et al. (2024) demonstrated that managing complexity within an ambidextrous organizational strategy is crucial for achieving innovation ambidexterity (IA). Small, autonomous units are proposed to enhance effectiveness, while entrepreneurial culture, mindsets, and processes further support IA. In this context coaching was identified as a key leadership value that encourages entrepreneurial behaviour and decision-making. Coaching has also been linked indirectly to innovation, as some argue it supports innovative organizational learning, increases knowledge socialization and opportunities for strategic innovation, and supports teams in exploring and exploiting new ideas (Percy & Dow, 2021).

Submissions may focus on, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Coaching for innovation in change averse countries and cultures;
• Managing innovation in fast-moving digital industries;
• Managing innovation in traditional industries;
• Managing innovation aided by artificial intelligence;
• Leadership coaches—experimental designs towards more effective innovation management;
• Leadership coaches—experimental designs towards creating more ethical leaders;
• Establishing a positive organization in view of a negative organizational history.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 300-500 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors (mao@ua.pt) or to the Administrative Sciences editorial office (admsci@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Au-Yong-Oliveira, M. (2022). Negative Organizations and [Negative] Powerful Relationships and How They Work against Innovation — Perspectives from Millennials, Generation Z and Other Experts. Sustainability, 14, 17018. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142417018.

Cox, E., Bachkirova, T., Clutterbuck, D. (Eds.) (2024). The complete handbook of coaching. 4^th ed. Sage, London.

Graça, B., Au-Yong-Oliveira, M. (2024). Competitiveness strategies for negative organizations: Challenging the status quo. Springer Nature. Book series - Information Systems Engineering and Management - ISEM, vol. 1. https://link.springer.com/book/9783031599132.

Pajuoja, M., Viitala, R., & Henttonen, K. (2025). Supporting innovating employees: how managerial coaching affects four dimensions of innovative work behavior. Review of Managerial Science, 19(9), 2937–2958. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-025-00837-6.

Percy, W., & Dow, K. (2021). The Coaching Black Box: Risk Mitigation during Change Management. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 14(8). https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14080344.

Pulakos, E. D., Mueller-Hanson, R., & Arad, S. (2019). The Evolution of Performance Management: Searching for Value. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 249–271. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012218-015009.

Roffe, I. (1999). Innovation and creativity in organisations: A review of the implications for training and development. Journal of European Industrial Training, 23(4/5), 224–241. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090599910272103.

Schindler, J., Kallmuenzer, A., & Valeri, M. (2024). Entrepreneurial culture and disruptive innovation in established firms – how to handle ambidexterity. Business Process Management Journal, 30(2), 366–387. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-02-2023-0117.

Von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. MIT Press.

Where do leaders lead us? (2009). Strategic Direction, 25(6), 22–25. https://doi.org/10.1108/02580540910952181.

Dr. Manuel Au-Yong-Oliveira
Prof. Dr. António Sacavém
Dr. Cicero Eduardo Walter
Prof. Dr. Ana Maria da Palma Moreira
Guest Editors

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• innovation management
• positive organizations
• coaching
• development
• solutions