Investigating Organizational Innovativeness: Developing a Multidimensional Formative Measure

Pallas F, Böckermann F, Götz O, Tecklenburg K

Abstract

To survive competition, it is vital for firms to be innovative. As a firm’s cultural predisposition, organizational innovativeness provides an environment that fosters innovations and thus actively supports new product or service development. The purpose of this study is to measure organizational innovativeness and its multiple dimensions from a cultural-strategic perspective on a multifaceted formative scale which we develop theoretically and by means of qualitative interviews. Furthermore, we empirically validate the newly developed construct by investigating how innovativeness and its dimensions translate into innovation success by examining the relationship between innovativeness and innovation performance in depth. Our findings suggest that a strategic focus on innovations, an extrinsic motivation system, openness in communication, as well as management encouragement are all dimensions of organizational innovativeness. Further, our results support the need for a proficient innovation process as a mechanism to systematically and continuously translate innovativeness into successful innovations. Innovation process proficiency fully mediates the relationship between innovativeness and innovation performance, while the contingency factor competitive intensity enhances this performance impact.