Organizational culture and innovation: exploring the “black box”

PurposeThis research aimed to conceptualize organizations as open and purposeful systems to study how organizational culture (OC) influences firms' Innovative Performance (IP). The authors proposed goal setting and internal integration/external adaptation paradox as central to explaining OC's mediating and suppressing effects on IP.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected data from 372 Costa Rican organizations and analyzed them with structural equations. This research used the Denison Model instead of the usual typology-based approaches.FindingsThe mission had a direct and high impact on IP. The mediated effect via adaptability was also elevated, as well as the suppressor effect through consistency. There was no effect on IP of involvement. According to these results, the Open and Rational Systems Framework emerge as the main theoretical explanatory concepts.Originality/valueDisaggregating the OC through a performance-oriented dimensional model makes it possible to study the dynamics between the elements that compound it and facilitate integrating these findings with other research streams.