Remote work and organizational culture for innovation: How organizational culture for innovation has been managed when working remotely

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world, organizations had to change the way they worked as employees had to work remotely. This abrupt transition to working remotely has brought many complications, one of which relates to organizations ability to sustain an innovative culture. This research aims to understand how organizations have managed their culture for innovation when employees have been working remotely. The companies in scope of the study are innovative organizations operating in Sweden where employees have experience from working remotely over some period of time. To enable assessment of how organizations have managed the organizational culture for innovation, a theoretical framework was defined in which Schein’s (1990) model for organizational culture served as a foundation. The proposed theoretical framework accounts for three dimensions of organizational culture for innovation. These are Values supporting an innovative culture, Norms for an innovative culture, and Artifacts of an innovative culture. The theoretical framework proposed that remote work has impacted all these dimensions. The empirical results show that although organizations have experienced issues in sustaining a culture for innovation, no impact on the values supporting an innovative culture could be found. However, findings show how organizations have introduced new, and adapted old, norms and artifacts to sustain an organizational culture for innovation when working remotely.