TY - JOUR

T1 - The role of error management culture for firm and individual innovativeness

AU - Fischer, Sebastian

AU - Frese, Michael

AU - Mertins, Jennifer Clarissa

AU - Hardt-Gawron, Julia Verena

N1 - Address for correspondence: Dr Sebastian Fischer, Department of Management and Organisation, Leuphana, University of Lueneburg, Germany. Email: Sebastian.fsc@gmail.com Thanks for partial support for writing this article by Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (R-317-000-123-112) as well as by German Research Foundation (FR638/38-1 Learning from errors and error management in organizations: Conditions, processes, and effects).

PY - 2018/7/1

Y1 - 2018/7/1

N2 - To innovate at work is risky as every new endeavour is also error-prone. Therefore, the way errors are managed in organisations may be related to organisations' innovativeness. We studied error management culture as one important and often overlooked organisational culture factor hypothesised to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Error management culture implies that a firm accepts that people make errors and uses “organizational practices related to communicating about errors, to sharing error knowledge, to helping in error situations, and to quickly detecting and handling errors” to deal with errors (Van Dyck, Frese, Baer, & Sonnentag, p. 1229). Our sample consists of 30 companies with N = 227 employees. To decrease the problem of common method variance, we split the samples within each company into two subsamples: one subsample was used for the measurement of error management culture and the other one for the measure of organisational innovativeness. A multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) analysis showed error management culture to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Organisational innovativeness was a mediator for the relationship between error management culture and individual innovativeness. A potential implication is that organisations wanting to increase their innovativeness may need to examine their error management culture.

AB - To innovate at work is risky as every new endeavour is also error-prone. Therefore, the way errors are managed in organisations may be related to organisations' innovativeness. We studied error management culture as one important and often overlooked organisational culture factor hypothesised to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Error management culture implies that a firm accepts that people make errors and uses “organizational practices related to communicating about errors, to sharing error knowledge, to helping in error situations, and to quickly detecting and handling errors” to deal with errors (Van Dyck, Frese, Baer, & Sonnentag, p. 1229). Our sample consists of 30 companies with N = 227 employees. To decrease the problem of common method variance, we split the samples within each company into two subsamples: one subsample was used for the measurement of error management culture and the other one for the measure of organisational innovativeness. A multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) analysis showed error management culture to be related to organisational and individual innovativeness. Organisational innovativeness was a mediator for the relationship between error management culture and individual innovativeness. A potential implication is that organisations wanting to increase their innovativeness may need to examine their error management culture.

KW - Entrepreneurship

KW - Business psychology

KW - employee

KW - human

KW - major clinical study

KW - measurement error

KW - mediator

KW - organizational culture

KW - structural equation modeling

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048774515&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/apps.12129

DO - 10.1111/apps.12129

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 67

SP - 428

EP - 453

JO - Applied Psychology

JF - Applied Psychology

SN - 0269-994X

IS - 3

ER -