Cultures of Adhocracy, Clan, Hierarchy and Market and Innovation Performance: A Case of Hotels in Turkey

AbstractInnovation is discussed as a critical element in the success of an organization but if an organization's culture does not support innovation it is unlikely to occur. So, it is very important for business to make the culture compatible with innovation. In this context, the study aims to examine the relationship between culture types (Adhocracy, Market, Clan, Hierarchy) and innovation performance in hotels, and basically argues that hotels demonstrate different innovation performances according to the their cultural features. To accomplish this aim, 1562 three, four and five-star hotels in Turkey were determined as research population and the sample is comprised of 310 of them. The questionnaire method was used to collect the data from hotel senior manager. The data were analyzed through LISREL program. Firstly, confirmatory factor analysis, relating to culture types and innovation performance, was conducted. Then, the relationships among these two constructs were examined. The findings show that there is a significant relationship between organizational culture features and innovation performance. The innovation performance of hotels, which have the characteristics of adhocracy culture and market culture, is more positive than the hotels with the clan culture and the hierarchy culture. So, it is suggested that hotels transform the existing culture into adhocracy culture and market culture to increase their innovation performance.Keywords: Culture types (adhocracy, market, clan, hierarchy), tourism sector, hotel business, innovation performanceIntroductionInnovativeness has drawn interdisciplinary attentions for decades, because of the impact of innovation on firm performance and on economic growth (Deshpande and Farley, 2004). Some researches attempt to explain sustained superior performance and innovativeness of firms by focusing on their culture (Barney, 1986). In the literature there is a consensus on that culture is an important determinant of organizational innovativeness and plays important role in making an innovation successful (Dombrowski et al., 2007). Innovation is discussed as a critical element in the success of an organization but if an organization's culture does not support innovation it is unlikely to occur (Belassi et al., 2007). Organizational culture has fascinated both academics and practitioners alike since the early 1980s (Lewis et al., 1997). There are a lot of fields are researched by scholars relating to organizational culture. The field of culture-performance studies has been on-going (the numbers of research published in the field is 144) (Deshpande and Farley, 2004). Many scholars (e.g. Chatman and Jehn, 1994; Denison and Mishra, 1995; Kotter and Heskett, 1992) has examined the relationships between culture, performance and effectiveness (Lee and Yu, 2004). The results of the studies suggest that culture can affect all organizational performance (finance, learning, market, innovation etc.) if it is "strong" (wide consensus, deeply internalized and socialized) and appropriate to its environment (relevant to its industry and business conditions) (Lee and Yu, 2004). According to Rashid (2004) there is an association between organizational culture and the affective, cognitive, and behavioral tendency of attitudes toward organizational change, and also different types of organizational culture have different levels of acceptance of attitudes toward organizational change. This means that certain type of organizational culture could facilitate the acceptability of change, while other types of culture could not accept it. In the same way, Ahmed (1998) suggested that innovation is the engine of change and the possession of positive cultural characteristics provides the organization with necessary ingredients to innovate. Also, culture could enhance or inhibit the tendency to innovate.On the other hand, although the relationship between culture and effectivenessperformance is relatively well established in the literature, relatively fewer indirect articles have been contributed towards the relationship between culture and innovation performance. …