Digitally Transforming Organisational Cultures: Ensuring Enhanced Innovation in a Remote Working World

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought with it dramatic environmental changes, forcing organisations to adopt digital technologies on a wider scale, under significant time pressure. While the pandemic tested the agility and resilience of organisations, team dynamics and the implications of virtualisation on collaboration and creativity have become increasingly important for research (George et al., 2020) as the daily working routines in which employees have been embedded in for decades have become disrupted. The abrupt move to “working from home” that the pandemic created is arguably the most significant organisational design change in our lifetimes. Organisations are now asking how the virtualisation of work has impacted on the collaboration and communication necessary for driving innovation behaviour, and what strategies are available to develop remote innovation solutions. In this study, we explore organisational culture theory against the backdrop of digitally transforming innovation development as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This multi-layered model offers a useful framework for thinking about processes that foster innovation. By doing so, we investigate how organisations have adapted their approach to remote, collaborative innovation from the perspective of nineteen industry experts. The purpose of this study is to present the determinants of organisational culture to develop digital innovation in a hybrid working environment. Our findings reveal twelve distinct variables across the artifacts, values, and assumptions required to ensure digital innovation. These findings have implications for theory and practice, as it provides organisational leaders with a strategic understanding as to how a remote innovative culture can be developed, and subsequently exploited.