Innovation at Wells Fargo Bank

Organizational Transformation

Identify, characterize the roles of incentives, training, and education in promoting innovation

Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational company involved in the provision of financial and banking services to its clients across the U.S. The company provides incentives, training, and education to ensure the realization of its desired organizational objectives and innovation. Providing these incentives promotes organizational performance in various ways. Incentives are useful in stimulating the interest of the employees towards learning and innovation. Incentives act as an indirect method of recognizing the contribution of the employees towards the performance of the organization. As such, incentives make the employees have shared objectives. Providing training to the organizational employees ensures their learning. It imparts them with the required knowledge and skills required for executing organizational activities. Similarly, providing them with training ensures that the organization meets personal and professional needs of the organization (Kemerer, 1997).

In addition, training and educational services, foster competition and innovation among the employees. These services encourage them to participate in challenging activities leading to their competitiveness and innovation among the employees. Competitiveness also stimulates desire to surpass and outdo other's contribution in the workplace. Moreover, providing employees with incentives, training, and educational opportunities makes them have the desire to acquire more incentives. Such becomes possible due to their ability to get the minds of the employees become accustomed to more tangible/visible credits rather than the intangible benefits. Therefore, providing these services makes the Wells Fargo to achieve its desired operational and performance objectives.

Roles of Leadership in Creating, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation in the organization

Leaders of the Wells Fargo Company play a significant role in developing, managing, and sustaining innovation in their organization. In specific, the leadership of the organization has contributed to the innovation of the organization significantly. The leadership of the organization has strengthened the creation of an environment that foster free and open communication between the employees and senior management team. An environment that promotes open communication ensures innovation is realized by sharing of information between different stakeholders. Open communication also provides the employees with the opportunities to express their ideas relating to ways in which organizational activities can be improved. Organizational analysis shows that the company aligns organizational strategies to its mission and vision to ensure innovation and realization of the stated organizational objectives. Aligning the strategies also creates awareness among the employees; hence, ease realization of the desired objectives (Scotchmer, 2006).

Leadership adopted by this organization also reduces bureaucracy. Significant evidence shows that organizations that practice bureaucratic leadership report slowed rates of adoption of new technologies and innovation. As such, the reduced bureaucracy evident in the Wells Fargo Company ensures innovation by eliminating barriers to innovation associated with bureaucratic leadership. The leadership used by the organization also instills a sense of ownership among its employees to ensure performance and realization of the desired organizational objectives. Ownership acts as a significant motivator to inventive thinking among the employees; hence, organizational innovation. Moreover, the company ensures recognition of the contribution of the employees in the performance of the organization and provision of incentives consistent. Tying incentives to innovation stimulates employees to develop additional ways of performing organizational activities, thereby, innovation within the company (Chandler, 2006).

Ethical Implications of Individual Incentives

Providing the employees with rewards has numerous ethical implications to the organization and the individual. Providing incentives imply that the organization has to use extra organizational resources to provide the required incentives to the employees. Such raises an ethical concern relating to the resources that should be used to reward the employees. The dilemma on the funds used for providing incentives to the employees fosters responsibility, accountability, equity, and proper documentation among the stakeholders involved in the provision of the services. The potential consequences of individual incentive programs also raise ethical concerns of the organization and employees. For instance, the expected threshold for providing the employees with the incentives raises significant ethical concern to the organization (Kemerer, 1997).

Organizations that provide their employees with incentives promote teamwork, creativity, high morale, and motivation among them. Providing individual incentives also spur competition among the employees to achieve high levels of innovation and creativity. On the other hand, individual incentives can also cause significant differences among the employees in the organization. For instance, providing the employees with different incentives create significant rift among them disrupts the coordination of organizational activities. Therefore, these imply that providing incentives to the employees should be carried out by considering various factors that could influence its outcomes (Chandler, 2006).

Would you describe Wells Fargo Innovative or Non-innovative?

The Wells Fargo Company is both innovative and non-innovative, depending on the division of focus and one's perception. General overview of the organization shows it as innovative. The innovation of the organization is evidenced by investing its resources in research and development. The company generates approximately five inventions on a weekly basis. The organization also shows its innovation by dedicating its 3000 employees to training opportunities in research and development to promote their personal and professional development.