Ideoculture of Innovation Management in Spanish Organizations: A Fine Look

Abstract

Innovation plays a fundamental role in the survival of any organization. Among its determining factors is the organizational culture, which shapes behaviors and guides agents towards specific ends. Until now, the literature has focused on studying the confluence of ‘organizational culture’ and ‘innovation’ from structural postulates, where the organization is the main entity and culture a homogeneous and functional whole. Critical aspects such as cultural plurality and social dimension are left out. Thus, this article seeks to describe the ideoculture of organizational innovation management units, taking as a sample seven Spanish companies, using various qualitative methodologies, to describe this ideoculture. The findings obtained show twelve cultural elements inherent to these units. Its ideoculture is conditioned by tasks, it has its own language, it is reflective, it relies on informality and the past is a useful tool for its members. From a cultural point of view, the execution of innovation management is iterative, multifocal, fragmented, projected towards the future and interdependent with other internal units and external agents. It concludes in deepening this intersection between structure and agents, rational socialization and affinities, reintegrating the social and plural complexity, typical of any social fabric.