1. Introduction

The studying of innovation within the organizational context can be done from three areas: the first one focuses on reviewing the form in which components from the process of innovation join and work within an organization; to that end, innovation models (^{Rothwell, 1994}; ^{Chesbrough, Vanhaverbeke and West, 2006}; ^{Christensen, 2009}; ^{Crossan and Apaydin, 2010}; ^{Burns and Stalker, 1961}) and innovation management (^{Jaramillo, Lugones and Salazar, 2000}) approaches may be employed. The second one is oriented towards setting up factors and capacities that boost the process of innovation; in this case analyses from the proposals of dynamic capacities (^{Teece, Pisano and Shuen, 1997}; ^{Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000}) and knowledge management are applicable (^{Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995}). The third approach focuses on the exploration of the environment allowing to carry out innovation processes, where from the organization and individual groups that make it up are taken into account, as well as the kind of organizational culture and leadership as aspects that might favor innovation (^{Duncan, 1976}; ^{Leonard-Barton, 1992}; ^{Sahay and Gupta, 2011}; ^{Sharifirad and Ataei 2012}; ^{Horth and Buchner, 2014}; ^{Flores, 2015}). Organizational culture plays a key role in organization insomuch as it influences the company’s behavior as a set and its capacity to innovate, an important condition given the economy’s current state (^{Naranjo and Calderon, 2015}), and regions’ possibilities for development.

Organization culture is important for companies, inasmuch as innovating demands a willingness of spirit that integrates creativity, taste for risk and will to undertake from a corporate perspective, which become strengthened by an appropriate climate and environment that motivate individuals to create new ideas that may be developed throughout different corporate activities which could derivate in yields for the company. Within the literature on organizational culture for innovation, numerous works are found to approach different topics from the relationship between organizational culture, behaviors and innovative outputs (^{Martins and Terblanche, 2003}; ^{Jamrog, Vickers and Bear, 2006}; ^{McLaughlin, 2005}; ^{Ahmed, 1998}; ^{Kaasa and Vadi, 2008}). Some of them from an empirical character analyze said relationship through qualitative techniques, while others propose tools to measure and characterize organizational culture for innovation (^{Dobni, 2008}; ^{Rao and Weintraub, 2013}; ^{Muñoz, Cornejo, Diaz and Muñoz, 2015}; ^{Tejeiro, 2014}). It is less frequent to find empirical works on organizational culture for innovation in the Colombian context (^{Naranjo and Calderon, 2015}).

In the case of Latin America, ^{Ketelhöhn and Ogliastri (2013)} take on a bibliographic review regarding how the analysis on innovation has been approached, and account for indicators of innovation per region (referring to the creation of patents, networks of collaboration, etc.) as well as for possible merits and barriers for it to become a present reality within our context and our companies. On the other hand, the work by ^{Rao and Weintraub (2013)} sets forth a measurement tool of organizational culture for innovation, which reviews aspects regarding climate, resources, success, values and processes. For the Colombian scenario, ^{Calderon and Naranjo (2007)} work out an innovative profile they contrast against metallurgical companies’ by applying a test designed to set the character of organizations, and highlighting that innovative companies are open to their environment and found to be oriented to their customers, whereby they seek to set up mechanisms that allow them to be sensitive and perceive the environmental modifications, recognize the value of intuition, feelings and human quality. On the other hand, ^{Galvez (2011)} analyzed the relationship between organizational culture for innovation and yields obtained by SMEs in Colombia by following ^{Cameron and Quinn’s (1999)} organizational culture proposals. The results suggest that organizational culture for innovation: a) increases an organization’s internal efficiency; b) improves customer satisfaction, rapidity to adapt to the market’s needs, corporate image and its products or services; c) increases market share, profitability and productivity, and d) improves overall performance.

The present paper proposes an organizational culture model which favors the adoption of innovation from a case study of a company from the engineering sector. To that end, firstly, organizational culture for innovation is established as serving as the basis to define the components and characteristics of these kind of culture. Secondly, an organizational culture characterization methodology is presented in order to identify existing breaches between the basis organizational culture in the company and organizational culture for innovation. Lastly, from the diagnosis as performed, some activities that might contribute for the company to close those breaches are set forth.

The finding’s general usefulness lies in explaining how an organizational culture for innovation might positively influence on the organization, and facilitate the company’s generation of innovation and sustainable competitive advantages. Likewise, it contributes to the existing body of literature about on organizational culture for innovation as it offers a replicable methodology for different-sized companies, which might be used to appropriately define efforts for innovation to escalate within organizational culture.

2. Theoretical Framework

Next, we’ll point to the most important aspects derivatives from the consultation and analysis of specialized literature, which account for two aspects key to the research problem at hand: a) organizational culture and its relationship with innovation, and b) formers of organizational culture for innovation.

3. Methodology

The present research parted from the following inquiries: how to include innovation into a company’s organizational culture? What are the existing gaps between the current organizational culture and organizational culture for innovation in a company? What are the strategies to be followed by a company in order to implement an organizational culture for innovation? In order to respond to such questions an initial bibliographical revision and analysis took place in connection to organizational culture and innovation, which sought to find common ground between these two elements.

Hereinafter, a survey form was designed with 44 questions distributed throughout 8 components, as seen in Table 1, with five-value Likert scale-type answers. The validation of the instrument’s internal consistency was performed by means of the Cronbach’s Alpha statistical by using SPSS statistics. At first, Cronbach’s coefficient for the 47 variables was analyzed for the results of a seven-survey sample. Three variables were suppressed as they yielded variance equal to zero, and finally and Alpha of 0.733 was obtained, which located within the rage of reliability for confirmatory studies (^{Hu, Delorme and Reid, 2006}).

The instrument was applied on the universe of workers made up by 49 members distributed through strategic apex, middle management and base operational nucleus. For data gathering effects the survey was sent through institutional e-mail, and obtaining response from 47 workers. Anonymity of the answers was guaranteed. The results were then averaged in order to obtain a global value of the kind of organizational culture, which determines current organizational culture’s distance from an organizational culture for innovation. To that end, there typologies of organizational culture were set forth:

From these outcomes and the characterization of traits present in an organizational culture for innovation into eight components, as shown in Table 2, gaps are identified between basis organizational culture and target organizational culture, in order to subsequently propose efforts required to transit towards the desired organizational culture.

Table 2 Results per component 

Source: Author’s own elaboration

4. Results and discussion

Once the instrument was applied on the company subject of study a global organizational value of 3.4 was obtained, which signals the company’s basis organizational culture as corresponding to an organizational culture in transition to innovation. The results from all components locate in the range of organizational culture in transition, with the best-ranked components being leadership and creativity and the lowest-ranked ones being support and strategy. Table 2 shows the results obtained for each component.

The outcomes contrast against what is expected from a target organizational culture of innovation, wherefrom gaps and required efforts to mitigate them are identified. Likewise, three kinds of efforts are proposed:

Once such efforts are defined, the prioritizing of the intervention in two levels takes place: at each component and the gaps identified per component, as Table 3 shows.

Table 3 Gaps between basis organization culture and target organizational culture, efforts 

Source: Author’s own elaboration

5. Conclusions

Organizational culture for innovation is a topic which has drawn efforts from varied empirical researches and construct proposals oriented towards showing how an organization is capable of creating sustainable competitive advantages, from an organizational culture that furnishes the necessary elements to innovate (^{Ahmed, 1998}), and creates environment where individuals feel motivated to achieve such purpose.

This work’s objective meant to design the proposal of an organizational culture for innovation model that favors adopting innovation for the development of products or services, and its introduction and exploitation into the market.

Therefor, firstly, literature was searched on organizational culture and its relationship with innovation, which served as sustenance to identify the components aiding to create and set up an organizational culture for innovation.

Based on the foregoing, eight (8) components formers of organizational culture for innovation were defined, and instrument designed to diagnose the organization subject of study’s basis culture made up of questions that allowed to conclude the company having an organizational culture in transition towards innovation, which signifies that there are gaps that need closing by following a variety of strategies. For instance, activities routed to opening up space to participation and generation of ideas must be executed, which also promote innovative attitudes among members; design and implement an innovation policy where incentives are taken into account for those who propose ideas, build ideas assessment tools and, overall, define the company’s innovation management characteristics. This way environmental conditions and characteristics could established, strategic and structural as needed so as to consolidate an organizational culture that favors and seizes its human talent’s knowledge and competencies, that also boosts the usage of innovative forms to represent problems, find solutions, pose processes of improvement, and identifies and seizes new opportunities (^{Martins and Terblanche, 2003}).

As for priorities of intervention to reduce gaps the results from the company’s basis organizational culture signal that none of the components lies within the rank of organizational culture for innovation, with leadership and creativity at the higher end. The above signifies that those are less-priority aspects in an intervention to change, but must be taken into account to seek their consolidation. Therefor activities may executed tending to apply and teach tools and strategies that promote creativity, by which coordinators boost their workers’ creative capacities and obtain greater knowledge on innovation. Notwithstanding, in order to attain a greater impact in the transformation of the organizational culture a time to adapt to changes will be required, wherefore following up on the intervention, evaluating and readjusting it turns important. In this process of change management is key to detect whether conditions that favor an organizational culture for innovation arise, such as trust among people pertaining to the organization, teamwork spirit, orientation to accept innovative changes, orientation towards actions, closeness with clients, process flexibility, self-satisfaction at work and rewards upon success (^{Rueda and Rodenes, 2010}).

Future works could draw on this research in order to approach elements not analyzed here such as the correlation of an organizational culture for innovation with the generation and trading of new products. Despite existing conceptual approaches on the matter, it could be highlighted by statistical analysis studies. Likewise, comparative studies among companies of similar characteristics could be performed by using the assessment instrument designed for this research, which turns into a methodology that might be employed at varied kinds of companies.

Finally, for the case of the company subject of study, the organizational culture model for innovation will be able to provide the opportunity to create an appropriate climate and space for innovation where creative and innovative attitudes are rewarded, and where ideas continuously arise for the development of new products, services and processes that represent profitability for the company and aid to consolidate a corporate strategy based on innovation.