AUDITING AND COMPARING INNOVATION MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS

The objective of this paper is to audit innovation management in one of the largest Saudi petrochemical companies (SABIC) and compare the results with those of companies in Brazil and China in order to identify the company’s strengths and weaknesses from an innovation perspective. First, an audit survey was carried out in the Saudi company. The results revealed that there is top management commitment and support for innovation, learning is well managed, the company is committed to the development of its employees worldwide and the innovation system is flexible enough to allow small projects to be fasttracked. Second, the audit results were compared with those of four companies in Brazil and China. SABIC was doing better than some companies in the linkages, learning and process dimensions. Some of the gaps between SABIC and the average of the Chinese and Brazilian firms are very low and could easily be closed. SABIC has strengths and weaknesses similar to the Chinese firms. They both showed strength in learning and weakness in strategy, while the Brazilian firms showed strength in the strategy and weakness in linkages. On the other hand, SABIC’s innovative organization and strategy dimensions ranked lowest and special attention is needed in these aspects