Abstract:

Full employee involvement in improving enterprises and their processes is one of the main assumptions of modern management methods. Often used solutions supporting this approach are employee suggestion systems (ESS), enabling the use of intellectual potential and creativity of own staff. It is generally assumed that the main purpose of such systems is to enhance employee involvement in developing enterprises and to increase their sense of self-agency and process ownership. It happens, that despite the large number of reported and implemented improvement processes, they do not create planned savings and do not generate expected benefits. The authors of this paper present the results of their initial research done on the group of 23 manufacturing enterprises in Poland. They comment the conclusions and research gaps, suggesting future research directions. The aim of the research was to find the answer on the research question: Do and how applied ESS solutions let achieve expected results (the level of savings) and do exist the key factors that influence economic efficiency of ESS. And if those effects are missing or if there is an insufficient level of return on investment, which problems causes it