Reference no: EM133045628

Innovative Climate

The context that the organisation finds itself in creates a firm's Climate (attitudes, behaviours, and feelings). This will feeds into the overall effect created by firm structure, processes, strategy, leadership, etc. Research has shown that organisational climate has an important role in supporting the innovation and creativity of an organisation and clear links between climate and innovative organisations have been identified. Some of the critical factors in climate that have been identified as influencing innovation are:

• Trust and openness
• Challenge and involvement
• Support and idea space
• Conflict and debate
• Risk taking
• Freedom

It has been argued that the dimensions of freedom, conflict and debate and risk-taking are related to radical (discontinuous) innovation in organisations. An innovative organisational climate can be viewed as the opposite of a bureaucratic atmosphere which is characterized by a rigid use of rules, lack of dynamism, fear of taking risks and focused on problems and not possibilities. In the literature, the largest gaps between the non-innovative and innovative organisations can be found in the areas of support and idea space, conflict and debate, and risk-taking. Innovative organisations have the capacity to adapt to constantly changing environments in order to survive and these adaptive organisations require a climate that stimulates innovative behaviour.

Question:

where climate factors for innovative organisations are outlined. Apply these climate factors to an organisation of your choosing (visit the organisations website if you need additional information). Which factors do you think this organisation does well in encouraging? Are they any climate factors influencing innovation that the organisation does not support well? Justify your answers with examples.