Abstract
Organizational agility, a firm’s ability to manage dynamic change, has become strategically important for companies in their innovation work. In this context cultural aspects are especially important, as they can both support and hamper organizational agility. Differences can generate innovation ability but they can also create conflicts between competing value systems, thus reducing the firm’s ability to develop organizational agility to support innovation processes. We conducted a comparative study in incumbent firms and startups in the automotive industry to identify the influence of entrepreneurial cultural values on organizational agility. The Competing Values Framework was applied to identify the relationship between cultural values and organizational agility. The result shows that cultural differences affect the companies ability to develop organizational agility for innovation work. In particular incumbents struggled to enable a change towards organizational agility. We found that startups integrated Clan and Adhocracy into an agile culture, which enabled continuous innovation growth. Keywords Organizational Agility, Organizational Culture, Agile Culture, Continuous Innovation, Competing Values Framework
Recommended Citation
Goncalves, Dulce; Bergquist, Magnus; Bunk, Richard; and Alänge, Sverker, "The Influence of Cultural Values on Organizational Agility" (2019). AMCIS 2019 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2019/data_agility/data_agility/1
The Influence of Cultural Values on Organizational Agility
Organizational agility, a firm’s ability to manage dynamic change, has become strategically important for companies in their innovation work. In this context cultural aspects are especially important, as they can both support and hamper organizational agility. Differences can generate innovation ability but they can also create conflicts between competing value systems, thus reducing the firm’s ability to develop organizational agility to support innovation processes. We conducted a comparative study in incumbent firms and startups in the automotive industry to identify the influence of entrepreneurial cultural values on organizational agility. The Competing Values Framework was applied to identify the relationship between cultural values and organizational agility. The result shows that cultural differences affect the companies ability to develop organizational agility for innovation work. In particular incumbents struggled to enable a change towards organizational agility. We found that startups integrated Clan and Adhocracy into an agile culture, which enabled continuous innovation growth. Keywords Organizational Agility, Organizational Culture, Agile Culture, Continuous Innovation, Competing Values Framework