The Relationship Between Environmental Turbulence and Organizational Innovativeness

Due to the aggressive nature of markets in today's world, where macro environmental factors affect the dynamics of competition, almost every industry is inevitably shaped by continuous innovation. Organizational innovativeness, which measures organizations' inclination towards innovative behavior and their capacity to deal with innovation, gains in importance as a strategic action when uncontrollable environmental factors keep on changing continually. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between technological/market turbulence and organizational innovativeness. The study involves a questionnaire-based survey obtained from 233 companies that have an R&D and innovation focus in Turkey. The formulated hypotheses are tested by using the Structural Equation Model. The results show that both technological turbulence and market turbulence are positively related to organizational innovativeness. This study also shows that the external environment is part of the innovative effort by establishing a direct link between market/technological turbulence and organizational innovativeness