Cultural differences in innovation championing strategies

To take advantage of the globalization of markets, multinational corporations have increased the amount of innovation undertaken in their overseas subsidiaries. This has meant that managers in many different cultural environments now are innovating. This dissertation examines how the cultural values of 2769 managers in six organizations in 32 countries influence their preferences for different strategies of innovation champions. The theoretical framework of this dissertation is fairly straightforward. All organizations, regardless of the society in which they are found, possess two universal characteristics--specialization of labor and a system of authority--which create resistance to innovation. Innovation champions are individuals who act to overcome these organizational obstacles. However, while the organizational barriers to innovation are universal, the licenses accorded to champions to go about overcoming these obstacles are culture-specific. This study examines the relationship between the specific behaviors of innovation champions tolerated by members of a firm and three cultural values: individualism/collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance/uncertainty acceptance. The basic argument is that country level differences in these three cultural values influence country level differences in the strategies used by managers to overcome obstacles to innovation. The study finds a number of significant relationships between cultural values and championing strategies. The most robust of these is that between individualism and rule breaking championing behavior. The more individualistic the society, the more managers prefer champions who violate organizational rules, norms and standard operating procedures to implement innovation. This finding is robust across numerous methodologies for analyzing the results of the study.