| This study investigates the relationship between work climate and process innovation within 11 Saudi Arabian and 2 American petrochemical plants. The study investigates this relationship in two ways. First, a cross-country means comparison is performed to determine the differences between American and Saudi respondents with regards to their personal values and their perceptions of organizational climate. These differences, in turn, are used to explain the study's finding of higher levels of process innovation among U.S. respondents. Second, regression analyses are used to test 17 hypotheses proposed in this study. These hypothesis tests address the impact the independent variables (both the cultural values and organizational climate factors) have on innovation. This study, unlike most studies conducted in Saudi organizations, looks at the problem from the employee perspective. Specifically, the study focused exclusively on engineers with non-managerial positions within the participating companies. Data for this study was gathered by distributing questionnaires, mostly based on items drawn from previous research, to the engineers in each of the participating organizations. In addition, interviews were conducted with several respondents. This study's findings; suggest that although U.S. respondents have a slight edge over their Saudi counterparts in terms of the personal values believed to foster innovation (e.g., stronger Intuitive Problem Solving and weaker Rational Problem Solving), the real American advantage lies in their perceptions of organizational climate. Overall, American respondents perceive greater levels of Peer Support, Managerial Support, Autonomy, Inter-departmental Coordination, and Involvement, and lower levels of Bureaucracy. These differences, partially explain the higher American scores in the different innovation measures (on average American scores were twice the Saudi scores).;In addition, respondent comments and interviews shows Saudis to be concerned with the important role nepotism and favoritism play in determining promotions and pay increases. In addition, Saudis complained of a lack of clarity and guidelines in relation to their responsibilities and obligations. These feelings could further explain the comparatively lower Saudi innovation levels. |
