Julia Naranjo-Valencia

By Julia C. Naranjo-Valencia and Gregorio Calderon-Hernández

In the current economic panorama, innovation is considered to be an important source of sustainable competitive advantage. The literature indicates that organizational culture is one of the most important factors in innovation stimulation, given that influencing employee behavior promotes the acceptance of innovation as a fundamental organizational value and employee commitment to it. As such, organizations should concentrate on promoting an innovative culture that permits the institutionalization of innovation, which may occur by way of planned action or by means controlled by leaders or indirect mechanisms, such as structures, procedures, or institutional policy declarations. The importance of an innovative culture model which serves as a basis for cultural transformation emerges therefrom. Previous investigations have addressed innovative culture models focused on cultural traits and/or cultural determinants. The present study offers a holistic innovative culture model that in addition to addressing cultural traits and their determinants, as is done in other models, and takes into account management competencies and organizational capacities that are required to conform to cultural traits, to achieve innovative behavior on the part of the individuals of the organization.

Part of the book: Organizational Culture