Organizational innovativeness and innovative performance: a multidimensional model

Abstract

The objective of the study was to investigate Organizational Innovativeness (OI), or the organizational conditions that enable companies to innovate. A multidimensional model was developed to identify OI dimensions. The model's capacity to evaluate the impact of such dimensions on innovative performance was empirically tested with a sample of 200 medium and large-scale companies from manufacturing and services sectors in Brazil. The data collection instrument comprised 54 questions related to the ten dimensions of OI and 9 questions related to innovation performance. The data were analyzed using canonical correlation analysis. The model displayed an ability to explain 95.3% of the variation in innovative performance in connection with innovation in products and services, and 92.8% regarding organizational improvements. The findings point to a decisive role of the proposed OI dimensions in relation to innovative performance. The canonical functions indicate an explanatory power of 96.38% for “Learning”, 69.39% for “People”, 66.90% for “Networking”, 65.76% for “Culture”, 63.27% for “Leadership”, 62.95% for “Processes”, 54.16% for “Organizational Structure”, 54.06% for “Strategy”, 49.65% for “Mensuration” and 40.36% for “Technological Infrastructure”. Therefore, organizational learning has a key role for the achievement of innovation results in the companies surveyed. Other dimensions also appear as important elements of OI, most notably human resource policies, organizational culture and leadership, as well as the ability of the firm to exploit is external relationships and processes to leverage its knowledge assets for innovation.