The considerable attention of Malaysian government on innovativeness, the quest to increase her market share from 1% to 2% of the global shipbuilding industry by 2020, and the strategic regional development plan of the Sarawak state in particular that focuses on the priority sectors including the Maritime industry motivated the conduct of this study. This paper, therefore, assesses the current innovativeness level among the shipbuilding companies; examines the direct relationship between independent variables (company culture and resources), the dependent variable (company innovativeness) and the moderating effect of external factors on the relationship. We used the simple random sampling to collect data from shipbuilding companies in Sarawak. We received 41 valid questionnaires out of 65 questionnaires distributed, yielding 63% response rate. We used descriptive statistics to determine the extent of innovativeness of the shipbuilding companies. PLS SEM was employed to test the direct and moderating effects on the variables. The findings of this research suggest that the extent of organizational innovativeness of the shipbuilding companies in Sarawak is in the category of "early majority" based on the mean score of 3.09 and this is slightly lower compared to the extent of innovativeness among the housing developers in Malaysia which was found to be at "adopter" category based on the mean score of 3.67 in a previous related study. While organizational culture was found to have negative relationship with innovativeness, organizational resources showed a significant positive relationship with innovativeness among the shipbuilding companies. Additionally, external factors moderate the relationships between resources and innovativeness. While the small sample size used in data collection is a major limitation of this study. It is hoped that our findings complement the existing body of knowledge and provides a direction for the future innovativeness studies.

In examining the influence of organizational culture and external factors on the innovativeness moderated by company resources among the shipbuilding companies operating in Sarawak Malaysia, we draw upon a theoretical perspective to develop hypotheses proposing that the organizational culture and external factors do influence the innovativeness among the shipbuilding companies in Sarawak. We used the simple random sampling to collect data from shipbuilding companies in Sarawak. We received 41 valid questionnaires out of 65 questionnaires distributed, yielding 63% response rate. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the direct and moderating effect on the variables. The result shows an unexpected negative relationship between organizational culture and innovativeness. However, external factors have a significant relationship with innovativeness among the shipbuilding companies. In addition, company resources moderate the relationships between culture and innovativeness. The findings from this study suggest that to enhance the innovativeness among the shipbuilding companies operating in Sarawak, managers and chief executives need to seriously consider all dimensions of culture, external factors and company resources examined in this research. It is hoped that our findings complement the existing body of knowledge and contribute to future studies on organizational innovativeness.