Building Organisational Culture that Stimulates Innovative Work Behaviour

In today’s dynamic and complex business environment, innovative work behaviour is seen as a critical success factor for organisations to obtain sustainable competitive advantages. One of the most important factors that affect innovative work behaviour is organisational culture. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between innovative work behaviour and organisational culture, so as to build an organisational culture that can stimulate employees' innovative work behaviour within organisations. In consideration of the complexity of organisational culture, this study adopts Martin and Terblanche’s model which divides organisational culture into five dimensions. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between the five dimensions and innovative work behaviour so as to identify the relationship between organisational culture and innovative work behaviours. This study examines the hypotheses by collecting data from 3M company’s subsidiary in China. A total of 110 respondents from 3M China complete the self-report questionnaires regarding the extent of their innovative work behaviours and the perceptions of organisational culture dimensions. The findings of this study shows that a significant and positive relationship exists between an organisation’s innovation strategy and innovative work behaviours. An unexpected finding is that there is no correlation between an organic organisational structure and innovative work behaviours. To conclude, this study provides a starting-point in exploring the relationship between organisational culture and innovative work behaviours on the basis of a relatively holistic perspective