Virtues for innovativeness : a mixed methods study of ethical organisational culture and organisational innovativeness

Abstract

This study examined ethical organisational culture, consisting of ethical organisational virtues, and organisational innovativeness. More specifically, the study explored the relationship between the phenomena. Ethical organisational culture was studied using Corporate Ethical Virtues (CEV) model, which is based on the virtue theory of business ethics. This research makes a contribution to prior research on ethical organisational culture by linking the concept of organisational innovativeness (OIN) to it. The overall goal of this study was to increase the understanding about the ethical organisational culture and its role in organisational innovativeness, and to provide a rich description of the topic using a mixed methods approach. The aims of this study were to examine the relationship between ethical organisational culture and organisational innovativeness, to increase the understanding about the relationship, and to discuss how mixed methods could be applied in organisational ethics and innovativeness research. The findings of this study showed that ethical organisational culture was associated with organisational innovativeness. The CEV and OIN scales were found to be valid instruments for assessing ethical organisational culture and organisational innovativeness in Finnish organisations. Further, the results showed that specific virtues of ethical culture were differently associated with various dimensions of organisational innovativeness. In general, the ethical organisational culture had a specific role in process and behavioural innovativeness. In addition, the findings suggested that ethically congruent behaviour of top management had the strongest association with organisational innovativeness overall and specifically with process and behavioural innovativeness. Furthermore, specific ethical organisational virtues, namely feasibility, discussability and supportability, seemed to encourage innovative behaviour in organisations. Thus, organisations could benefit from understanding which virtues of ethical culture are particularly relevant to organisational innovativeness. Finally, this study used mixed methods approach and provided more versatile and detailed information on ethical organisational culture and organisational innovativeness than a single-method study would have allowed.