Organizational Innovation: A meta analysis of effects of determinants and moderators

Source:Organizational Innovation: A Meta-Analysis of Effects of Determinants and Mod...
Damanpour, Fariborz
Academy of Management Journal; Sep 1991; 34, 3; ABI/INFORM Global

The meta-analysis provides an opportunity to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of each moderator in distinguishing the relationship between the organizational variables and innovation.
Moderators effect on organizational innovation.
Types of organization have following effects on organizational innovation:
Manufacturing is positively correlated with specialization, formalization and negatively related to centralization and vertical differentiation. For service organization moderators have positive effect for specialization, managerial attitude toward change and vertical differentiation and negative effect on formalization, centralization. For non-profit org moderators have positive effects for specialization, managerial attitude toward change and non-significant for functional differentiation. For profit org moderators have positive effect for specialization, functional differentiation and formalization and have negative effect for centralization and non-significant for managerial attitude toward change.
In case of types of innovation administrative innovation is positively related to specialization, functional differentiation, professionalization, external communication and vertical differentiation and negatively related to centralization and non-significant for formalization. Technical innovation is positively related to specialization, functional differentiation, professionalization, external communication and negatively related to centralization and non-significant for formalization and vertical differentiation. Product innovation is positively related to specialization, formalization, technical knowledge resources and negatively related to centralization and non-significant for professionalization. process innovation is positively related to specialization, professionalization, formalization, technical knowledge and non-significant for centralization. Radical innovation is positively related to specialization, professionalization, technical knowledge resources, external communication and non-significant for formalization, centralization and managerial attitude toward change.
Incremental innovation have positive effect on specialization, professionalization, managerial attitude toward change, technical knowledge resources, external communication and non-significant for centralization. In case of stages of adoption initial stage have positive effect on professionalization and external communication and negative for functional differentiation, formalization and centralization. Implementation stage have positive effect on specialization, functional differentiation, professionalization and external communication and negative effect on centralization and non-significant for formalization. In case of scope of innovation low scope have positive effect on specialization, centralization and managerial attitude toward change and non-significant for professionalization and formalization. High scope have positive effect on specialization, professionalization and managerial attitude toward change and negative effect on formalization and centralization.
By identifying the statistically significant and non-significant determinants of innovation.
This study illustrated the role of a moderator the innovation research has seldom considered explicitly. When the study is divided into two subgroups of low and high innovation scope, the high subgroup showed considerably stronger relationship with specialization, professionalization, formalization and centralization, all the directions suggested by theory.
Studies of large number of innovations of different types and radicalness over time will require new ways of designing and conducting innovations or sets of innovations of same type of groups of related innovations could help link innovativeness to organizational effectiveness. establishing such a link is necessary for expanding the scope of organizational innovation research to include evaluation of the consequences of innovation such studies however should be longitudinal and multidimensional and will require substantial resources and collaboration efforts among researchers conducting complementary research projects.