Narrow Results

Innovation is an ever-increasing focus for modern organizations; yet research studies on organizational culture have tended to neglect this aspect. This paper specifies the key factors characterising a company's innovation culture and examines the top managers' executed impact as organizational leaders from the individual perspective on implementing and fostering it in their respective organizations. Based on a conceptual framework, the empirically identified key factors of the (1) formal embedment, (2) climate, (3) incentives and reward allocation, (4) integration into decision process, (5) cross-hierarchical communication and (6) communication style are presented. Within the empirical study, 37 top managers of 21 leading companies in the industries of “fashion and accessories” and “watch and jewelry” were interviewed. The results indicate that the impact of top managers lag behind their potential to advance innovativeness through innovation culture, and the detected deficit represents scope for improvement. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications of the study and its limitations.