| This study examined the relationship between organizational culture and organizational innovativeness in a sample of nonprofit human service organizations in Alabama. Organizational innovativeness was operationalized with fourteen items developed on the basis of existing typologies of innovation. Organizational culture was measured using the Organizational Culture Profile (O'Reilly, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991). It was hypothesized that cultural consensus, or the degree of sharing of organizational values, and organizational values (the consensus content) would be important predictors of organizational innovativeness. Leadership and size were included as control variables. The cultural consensus model developed in the field of cognitive anthropology was employed to evaluate the degree of diversity and sharing among individuals within the organization, and to estimate the content that was being shared. Organizational innovativeness was inversely related to cultural consensus (r = -.570, p < .05). It was positively correlated with the innovation value dimension (r = .437, p < .10), and the aggressiveness value dimension (r = .430, p < .10), and negatively correlated with the stability value dimension (r = -.554, p < .05). Cultural consensus was positively correlated with two value dimensions---team orientation (r = .577, p < .01), and stability (r = .531, p < .05). Organizational innovativeness was not related to leadership and was significantly positively related to size (r = .391, p < .10). Cultural consensus was the only significant predictor, accounting for 36.5% of variance in the organizational innovativeness. The results of this study are significant from methodological, theoretical, and practical standpoints. The study not only demonstrated the appropriateness of the cultural consensus model for assessing organizational culture, but also provided support for the inclusion of organizational culture in the innovation models. It showed that a strongly shared culture might not be appropriate for fostering innovation, especially considering its content. Such values as cohesion, teamwork, stability, security, cooperation, and lack of conflict, when highly shared do not foster, but hinder the innovation efforts. For an organization to be innovative employees have to be given enough leeway to express their creativity, should be allowed to risk, experiment, and take advantage of opportunities. Since organizational culture was shown to be the most important predictor of organizational innovativeness, leaders should seek to introduce cultural changes in order for the organizations to be innovative. |
