The impact of the commitment to quality and entrepreneurial culture on the innovative behavior of manufacturing SME under a participatory management approach

Esta investigación de carácter exploratorio, contribuye a explicar cómo afecta al comportamiento innovador de la pyme manufacturera dos filosofías empresariales. En concreto, se estudia el impacto sobre el comportamiento innovador del compromiso por la calidad y del fomento de una cultura emprendedora, bajo un enfoque de dirección participativa. Para ello se establece un modelo estructural con las relaciones entre dichas variables y se analiza con la técnica PLS (Partial Least Squares). Los resultados muestran que tanto una como otra postura afectan al comportamiento innovador de una manera muy similar.There is no doubt that innovation is the result of a complex process involving a number of actors and diverse knowledge, and also that affects all company activities. It is indisputable that the innovative behavior (the actions of the organization that implement new solutions at any organizational level in management), is key to achieve sustainable competitive advantages,as it allows companies to be flexible and to improve their ability to adapt to the market and show changes against the competi- tion. Studies analyzing innovation in SMEs, highlight that innovation in these businesses is a process that is based primarily on the basis of their internal knowledge. Other studies indicate that SMEs, responsible for activating their innovation processes, are the customers themselves, due to new market needs or new technological developments, being R & D limited innovation processes in SMEs. Moreover, the importance that culture plays in the innovation is widely acknowledged. The relationship be- tween the two variables is mostly theoretical. There are few empirical studies focused on the relationship between culture and innovation, and most of them focused on some characteristic or trait culture (autonomy, risk mentality, market orientation, and employee management) rather than on ideals or cultural philosophies, contrary to what we do in this paper. Furthermore, the effects of certain types of culture on innovation are analyzed by few studies, in spite of not focusing on business environments. It is indisputable that innovative behavior is key to sustainable competitive advantages, as it allows companies to be flexible and to improve the ability to adapt to market changes. Therefore, finding the cultural values that encourage innovative behavior is relevant to business development. Presently, it is considered that the type of culture fostered by the organization can stimulate innovation, since culture influences the behavior of employees. As predicted by the literature, quality control oriented organizations tend to innovate on the basis of improving the control parameters, and consequently an innovation and learning-oriented organization has greater opportunities to address more radical innovations involving new technologies or break in the ideas