Culture, Empowerment and Openness for Change

Abstract

Chinese companies in the global economic downturn are also in need of innovation. In this viewpoint, this study analyzed the contextual relationship between organizational culture and empowerment and openness to change of organizational members through empirical analysis for Chinese companies. The empirical analysis was conducted by a questionnaire survey and a structural equation model was applied. Based on the empirical analysis, it is suggested that establishing an extroverted culture(market- oriented culture) is an effective approach to improving individual openness to change. Therefore, managers suggest that it is necessary to promote innovation by improving the intrinsic motivation for change of members, and to maintain the management and evaluation stance centered on innovation value and market performance in the organization. In addition, it was confirmed that empowerment for members is important to create a market-oriented culture. This is because it is possible to induce an individual's positive attitude toward change through authorization. This confirms the validity of the model for empowerment and organizational change proposed by Erstad (1997) earlier. In addition, it was confirmed that managers can promote employee empowerment through teamwork support (Cook, 1994), information sharing and learning. This is because these empowerment strategies help members understand the targets of change and provide more opportunities to cope with the challenges of change. In addition, it was confirmed that the empowerment between the environment-oriented organizational culture and openness to change plays a role as a parameter.