Innovation Culture, R&D Intensity, and Firm Innovation

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the value of two types of innovation culture, namely employee-perceived and firm-proclaimed innovation culture. We quantify how employees perceive innovation culture by analyzing the text of 191542 employee reviews on Glassdoor and identifying the presence of firm-proclaimed innovation culture from their official websites. The results indicate that employee-perceived innovation culture has a positive influence on innovation output whereas firm-proclaimed innovation culture does not. Moreover, R&D intensity negatively moderates the effect of employee perceived innovation culture on firm innovation, such that the effect of employee perceived innovation culture is lower when R&D intensity is higher. This finding contradicts the observation of previous studies that used cross-sectional survey data. Nevertheless, our finding is consistent with the view that innovation culture cultivates the intrinsic motivation of employees, but the symbiotic control that comprises the increase of R&D intensity weakens it.