The relationship between employees’ perceptions of climate for innovation, organisation innovativeness, and customer experience in a major telecommunications organisation in Egypt

Abstract

Organisational success in the 21st century is determined by an organisation’s ability to remain in a state of continuous innovation. Innovation is considered as a competitive tool for an organisation’s long term performance and an important means for adapting to the evolving customer needs. Therefore, it is vital for organisations to develop work environments that promote innovation. By fostering a climate for innovation, employees are inspired to be innovative, leading to the production of innovative outcomes. Customer experience also is increasingly becoming a differentiating factor for companies. Interest in the customer experience concept has increased tremendously over the past decades among researchers and practitioners. Organisations need to introduce innovative products and services to leverage the customer experience. There have been no studies examining the relationship between employees’ perceptions of climate for innovation, organisation innovativeness, and customer experience in a single study. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate and provide an in-depth understanding of the relationship between employees’ perceptions of climate for innovation, organisation innovativeness, and customer experience in a service setting. This study adopts a qualitative single case study research design to provide an in-depth investigation and understanding of the phenomena under study in a major telecommunications organisation in Egypt. Findings from this study show that there is a relationship between employees’ perceptions of climate for innovation, organisation innovativeness, and customer experience in a service setting. The study identifies five main themes of climate for innovation that enhance organisation innovativeness. Finally, a key finding of this research is identifying that there are certain dimensions of climate for innovation that are highly related to customer experience than other dimensions: customer centricity, idea support, senior management support, risk-taking, open innovation, idea time, teamwork and cohesion, employee empowerment, structure of functional units, rewards and recognition, challenging jobs, and employee involvement