Abstract
This study participates in the discussion of the ethical culture of organizations by deepening the knowledge and understanding of the meaning of organizational ethical virtues in organizational innovativeness. The aim in this study was to explore how an organization’s ethical culture and, more specifically, organization’s ethical virtues support organizational innovativeness. The ethical culture of an organization is defined as the virtuousness of an organization. Organizational innovativeness is conceptualized as an organization’s behavioral propensity to produce innovative products and services. The empirical data consisted of a total of 39 interviews from specialist organizations. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that the organizational ethical virtues of feasibility, discussability, supportability, and congruency of management are those that support organizational innovativeness. The findings also show which specific elements of these virtues and related organizational practices are important to innovativeness. In addition, this study showed that the features of organizational innovativeness are not necessarily dichotomous but rather follow the ideas of virtues and are versatile in nature.
Highlights
Innovativeness has an important role in organizations, as it has been found to be related to their performance, success, and continuity in the long term (e.g., Anderson et al 2014; Calantone et al 2002; Salavou 2004)
This study aims to reply to the following research questions: What is the meaning of ‘‘ethical culture’’ in organizational innovativeness? And which organizational ethical virtues support organizational innovativeness? Which elements of these virtues are important for supporting organizational innovativeness? Which organizational practices are essential for the virtues that support organizational innovativeness? This study participates in the discussion of the ethical culture of organizations by deepening the knowledge and understanding of the meaning of organizational ethical virtues in organizational innovativeness
We focus on the four organizational ethical virtues that the interviewees perceived as meaningful for organizational innovativeness
Summary
Innovativeness has an important role in organizations, as it has been found to be related to their performance, success, and continuity in the long term (e.g., Anderson et al 2014; Calantone et al 2002; Salavou 2004). It can be said that previous studies have often simplified the characteristics of innovativeness by both making a dichotomy between antecedents and barriers and listing factors affecting innovativeness without a deeper explanation and understanding of these factors. Instead of repeating this dichotomous view and only listing the affecting factors, we argue here that the link between organizational culture and innovativeness is more
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