Organizational culture, market orientation, innovativeness, and firm performance:: an international research odyssey

In this paper, we chronicle a research program spanning a decade and a dozen countries. The studies were framed in an extended model of competing values of organizational culture, and focused on how organizational culture, market orientation, and innovativeness affect the performance of firms competing in business-to-business markets. The design was developed and first tested in Japan. It was used throughout the research program, with the exception of a simplification of the sampling unit. We summarize substantive conclusions, including discussion of empirical similarities and differences in different cultures, in rich and poor countries, in the Orient and the Occident, in emerging economies, and in economies in transition towards a more market-driven form. As a general pattern, we find significant differences across countries in the means of all of the variables under study, and these differences generally reflect characteristics of national cultures. However, we find that slopes relating these variables to firm performance do not differ systematically over countries. We also examine buyer-seller relationships in the framework of an international "natural experiment" based on aspects of national culture. A brief research agenda is included. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.