Open climate in organizations – insights from a pilot study

The open strategy concept has recently received much scholars’ attention, mainly due to rising technological developments and social expectations (Heracleous, 2019; Morton et al., 2019; Sailer et al., 2018; Seidl et al., 2019). This concept is rooted in the notion of the necessity of injecting greater transparency and inclusiveness into the strategizing process by involving internal and external stakeholders (Whittington et al., 2011). Scholars have investigated open strategy, applying various views (Tavakoli et al., 2017), including open strategy as an entity (e.g., Golsorkhi et al., 2010; Hutter et al., 2017), open strategy as a process (Malhotra et al., 2017) and open strategy as a practice (Tavakoli et al., 2017). Several studies applying the lens of practice view to open strategy have emerged in recent years (Tavakoli et al., 2017). This approach allows us to unfold more complex phenomena and their inseparable aspects (Whittington, 2006), such as organizational values or norms, and how they bundle with open strategy practices. As Tavakoli et al. (2017) outline, the practice approach allows focusing on the “internal life” of open strategy practices. Therefore, it builds the ground for investigating the norms and values underpinning open strategy (Tavakoli et al., 2017).

As scholars commonly confirm that inclusiveness and transparency are vital values characterizing open strategy (Baptista et al., 2017; Hautz et al., 2017; Heracleous et al., 2018; Nobre and Grandclaude, 2021; Sailer et al., 2018; Xu and Alexy, 2019), these values can serve as both guiding principles for creating open strategy and as building blocks of a framework for investigating how other elements of practices intertwine with these principles. For example, Tavakoli et al. (2017) identified an Idealtypus (Weber, 1904) of open strategy characterized by inclusiveness and transparency values: transparent discourse, cocreation, and democratic decision-making. Previous studies have also shown that open strategy practices may take the form of partial or radical openness (Luedicke et al., 2017). However, the fundamental values (transparency and inclusiveness) seem the same in both forms.

Thus, the question arises why companies employ different openness practices if the underpinning set of values is the same. We investigate this topic beginning with the broad notion of an organizational climate. Previous research investigated the open strategy enablers with a primary focus on the IT context (Tavakoli et al. 2017, Morton et al., 2019), but more context-specific, distinctives procedures and norms have also been outlined as important factors enhancing or hindering openness practices (Splitter et al., 2019).

Organizational climate can be defined as the replicating patterns of attitudes, feelings and behaviors of employees towards and within their workplace environment (Zwikael and Meredith, 2019; Punwatkar and Verghese, 2018). It has a widespread effect on an organization as a whole, from leadership behavior, through policies and practices, to safety, creativity, innovation and incentives (Zwikael and Meredith, 2019; Hannevik et al., 2014).

The concept of organizational climate has been outlined as multidimensional (Coda et al., 2015). Various dimensions have been used for measuring organizational climate. For example, Patterson et al. (2005) listed 17 climate dimensions, categorized within four core areas: human relations, internal processes, open systems, and rational goals. Some of these dimensions bear the hallmarks of openness, especially dimensions such as involvement, communication, integration, supervisory support, flexibility, and reflexivity. In turn, Kangis et al., (2000) based on Newman’s concept of a Perceived Work Environment (Newman, 1977), enumerated six organizational climate dimensions, with one of them appearing to have particular relevance for openness: supervisory style.

Similar dimensions of organizational climate appear in the work of Rožman and Štrukelj (2020). These scholars examined the impact of organizational climate on employees’ work engagement using five organizational climate essentials: leadership, employee relations, employee commitment, employee satisfaction, and employee motivation. We can observe that some of these listed components are related to openness. In particular, these are the elements pertaining to open, supportive, and transparent relations between managers and employees, and between employees. There are also factors related to autonomy and flexibility at work, cooperation among employees, and involvement in work, which fit the concept of openness.

That is why we believe it is worth investigating the possible relations between organizational climate and open strategy, and what particular type of organizational climate fosters openness. Although many studies have explored the topics of organizational climate and strategy separately, only a few scholars have paid attention to the need to investigate the interrelationships between these concepts, suggesting that a firm’s strategy either aligns with organizational climate or fits it (Burton et al., 2004).

We believe that organizational climate should be blended with the investigation of open strategy to fully cover the essence of openness (understood here as transparency and inclusiveness, with internal and external perspectives employed). It is vital to integrate the views of diverse stakeholders with the overlapping values representing various types of climate (Brawley Newlin and Pury, 2020).

As we mentioned in the previous section, the open strategy concept is based on two core values (transparency and inclusiveness) employed in the strategy-making process (Heracleous et al., 2018). Yet, they are introduced either selectively or entirely (Luedicke et al., 2017). The underpinnings of those two approaches may be rooted in the characteristics of organizational climate as a scope of values that shape strategic choices (Friend et al., 2020). Moreover, perceptions of organizational climate affect responses toward work and shape the attitudes of employees (Al Damoe et al., 2017, Najar and Dhaouadi, 2020).

Thus, on the one hand, organizational climate impacts the sense-making processes and organizational ability to build the shared meaning attached to the workplace (Ehrhart et al., 2014). On the other hand, it defines typical behavioral patterns that exist regardless of individual perceptions (Isaksen, 2017). Both functions of organizational climate are crucial while attempting to enhance openness by increasing the visiblitiy of the strategic information (Yakis-Douglas et al., 2017) and including the internal and external knowledge sources (stakeholders) in the strategy-making process (von Krogh and Geilinger, 2019).

As already mentioned, the conceptualization of organizational climate is challenging, as various dimensions have been considered, some of which have been replicated, replaced, or recreated in studies performed by different scholars. From the open strategy standpoint, we can observe that a more focused concept of creative climate has been introduced to outline conditions necessary to stimulate creativity in organizations. Malikeh and Forough (2012, p. 106) suggest that a creative climate “encourages people to generate new ideas and helps the organization to grow and increase its efficiency, and at the same time, it enables members to generate and implement creative ideas more effectively”. The works of Ekvall (1996) and Amabile et al. (1996) are the best-known examples of creative climate conceptualizations. After investigating Ekvall’s model of creative climate (Ekvall, 1996), we may suggest that six out of ten creative climate dimensions also allude to openness: idea time, idea support, risk-taking, freedom, conflicts, debates, and trust/openness. Comparing the organizational climate and creative climate dimensions, we will notice that some are repeated (conflicts, risk, trust, freedom/autonomy). In this study, we assume that opening up the strategizing process requires a specific organizational climate, where transparency and inclusiveness are supported.

We assume that a particular type of organizational climate may be related to open strategy practices. This type can be labeled as “open climate”. Current open strategy studies lack established conceptualizations of an open climate, and thus there are no validated research tools and instruments that allow for assessing a company’s climate of openness. We opted for a pilot study to test identified dimensions. Pilot studies have been widely applied by quantitative researchers (Bryman, 2016), but qualitative researchers also highlight the benefits of using pilots in multiple phases of research design. Examples may include interview protocols (Silverman, 2010), testing transcriptions and analysis processes (Guest and MacQueen, 2008) or increasing the research quality in general (Malmqvist et al., 2019).

As Sampson (2004, p. 400) outlines, pilots introduce researchers to “unknown worlds”. Such “unknowns” can be the result of a lack of published work or a theory to guide research design (Claudio Bosio et al., 2012). A pilot study such as ours can then serve to plan a better-designed qualitative study and be the first step in developing measurement tools. Several scholars in the field have called for broader discussion and sharing of both pilots’ findings and procedures, as such issues are important to research quality (Lees et al., 2022; Malmqvist et al., 2019; Pritchard et al., 1999; van Teijlingen and Hundley, 2002). That is the path we follow in this study.

In our study, we follow Suri’s (2011) suggestion for exploratory research with purposive sampling. We decided to choose technological firms from the CI. Our choice of the CI as a context for this research is justified because previous studies have identified several features of these industries that can be associated with openness. Among these features are knowledge creation and absorption, and as found by Pittz et al. (2019), open-up strategizing supports the process of creating and absorbing knowledge. In turn, the use of the organization’s absorptive capacity is achieved through inter-organizational learning (Vaisz et al., 2021). The structure of the CI may contribute to the intensification of this inter-organizational learning, because it turns out that CI are composed mainly of micro-enterprises, which often exist in various types of network configurations (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). These qualities, in turn, require more openness from the organizations, which results from the specific organizational climate that we want to identify.

Our study was conducted among technological firms from CI located in Poland. We chose Poland as a geographical context for our research for several reasons. First, according to a report provided by UNCTAD (2022), Poland occupies the 7^th position among the top 10 creative goods exporters. Second, the country has been classified as an economy to be watched as a “rising star” in the CI (UNCTAD, 2018). Third, the industry’s structure largely reflects world trends, as most creative entities (99.2%) are microenterprises (Main Statistical Office, 2023). Fourth, Poland is an interesting context in which to study open strategizing, not only from an economic standpoint, but also due to its cultural characteristics; in Polish society, there has been an apparent cultural shift from the domination of individualist values, as Hofstede (1997) found in research conducted in Central and Eastern European countries in the 1990s, to more collectivist values that have emerged amongst Poles in recent times (Damen et al., 2019). We believe this shift in values, being faced with the necessity of including others in decision-making processes, as well as being transparent about key issues, may bring interesting, counter-intuitive findings in open strategizing.

We have selected technological firms from the CI, as previous studies showed that technology-intensive enterprises often engage in open innovation (Henttonen and Lehtimäki, 2017) and are embedded in various ecosystems that foster open initiatives (Berman et al., 2022).

We applied purposeful sampling (Suri, 2011), meaning that we have intentionally selected informants that we believe would reveal insights relevant to the scope of our study. We chose eight managers of firms that met the following criteria: operating in a technological industry, having experience with launching an innovative product, and showing strong growth dynamics. We selected four incumbents and four challengers for our research group to identify shared patterns of open strategy, and related climate understanding among the managers, and potential cross-case differences.

To collect more comprehensive, valuable, and diversified data (Graebner et al., 2012), we opted for a series of semi-structured interviews (Adams and Cox, 2008). Following a triangulation (Wilson and Hutchinson, 1991), we applied a combination of individual in-depth interviews (IDI), dyads, and FGI (see Table 1).

The interview scenario was designed with a reflexive focus (Arsel, 2017) on exploring the dimensions of open climate as a factor that may enhance or reduce barriers to the open strategizing process. The scenario consisted of topics related to the perception of open strategy, professional experiences with applying such strategy, the antecedents required for open strategizing, and the perceived role and particular dimensions of an organizational climate that may foster open strategizing. The research scenario is presented in Appendix 1.

All the recordings were transcribed and various types of data analysis were used, specifically: deductive coding (Charmaz, 2006), thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), and flexible pattern matching (Bouncken et al., 2021). The unitization strategy focused on units of meaning rather than sentences or paragraphs (Campbell et al., 2013). To increase the findings’ coherence and trustworthiness, we applied two approaches: triangulation of coders (Archibald, 2015) and an iterative coding procedure (Nowell et al., 2017). The coding process was manual, and interview transcripts were reviewed by separate researchers multiple times. After several rounds of coding and discussion, the researchers reached a negotiated agreement (Campbell et al., 2013) and followed it with further thematic analyses. Example statements are presented in Appendix 2. As this was a pilot study, we also discussed the empirical findings, as well as the methodological revisions required in further steps of the inquiry related to our research design and procedure.

In the next section, we present the main findings concerning methodological insights and the dimensions of an open climate that have emerged at this initial stage of our research.

A purposeful sampling of technological firms revealed that one should not assume radical openness a priori based on industry specifics. We found various levels of openness among our informants. We still find technological firms to be a favorable environment in which to discuss openness. In the main study, however, our purposeful sampling will focus on investigating the broader ecosystems in which such companies are embedded, rather than just individual firms. We believe such refocus will allow for identifying firms with a more open approach and exploring openness practices from the perspective of various ecosystem actors.

During the pilot study, we faced some problems with recruitment procedures. The recruitment process turned out to be long-running due to the time constraints of our informants. Other scholars have also reported similar challenges in the recruitment process (Natow, 2020). Initially, we hoped to gather the data via focus group interviews; however, arranging a meeting between all our informants at once was impossible. That was why we turned to IDIs, dyads, and FGI.

The mistake we, as researchers, made was the assumption that our informants would be more available and present a higher willingness to participate in a study. We conclude that time constraints are a common issue for business managers (Ma et al., 2021) and that this should be considered while designing research. That is why a research design should include various and meaningful incentives to increase informants’ willingness to participate in a study despite their time constraints. In the main study, we will try to create a more meaningful interview experience by, for instance, ensuring extra time for networking or private conversations between the informants and highlighting these benefits in the study invitation, as Ma and Seidl (2018) suggest.

Interviews as a data collection method were useful for comprehensive insights on the differences between participants’ declarations and their practices. However, the usefulness of the planned interview scenarios turned out to be limited. The main limitations were the high generalization level and the lack of detail in instructions and understanding. Moreover, as we were eager to receive some confirmation of opinions reflected in actual managerial actions, we imposed high ad hoc pressure to recall the examples. We recognize that there is room for improvement in this area, as it was an incidental rather than general approach to interviewing.

We framed the questions in the interview scenario around three research queries as we tried to reveal the open climate’s dimensionss and their impact on the open strategizing process. Finally, we pointed out those crucial for opening the strategizing process. Mistakes we as researchers made were rooted in imposing the wrong approach to designing the scenarios, which should have been more precise and modified according to a frame provided by strategy-as-practice theory, thus investigating practices, praxis, and practitioners. Such an approach would allow us to study the roots and interpretations of open strategizing practices and related dimensions of the open climate (see Table 3). Therefore, we propose a new scenario with a new research perspective (see Table 2).

We concluded that instead of investigating the categories drawn from the literature, we should apply the strategy-as-practice approach focusing more on examples and confirmations. To increase the data’s usefulness, however, the questions should be revealed in advance, and our informants should be allotted more time to recall the examples of practices to illustrate their answers.

In subsequent studies, more emphasis should be put on understanding how companies practice open strategy. Based on the patterns seen here, more open or closed strategizing processes can be delineated, and practices that demonstrate open climate can be revealed and explained.

Based on the pilot study, we may state that the interviewing style should be more precise – in particular, in situations where informants needed clarification of complex or difficult to comprehend issues. In these situations, we learned that it is necessary to offer more detailed guidelines and deliver clear definitions of unintelligible terms and concepts.

The interviewer should maintain control over the interview process and the involvement of individual participants throughout the interview. We are referring here to the situations mentioned by Charmaz (2006). According to this author during an interview, participants may take charge, turn the interview questions to address topics on their own terms, or recite public relations rhetoric rather than reveal their personal views.

During the interviews conducted in the form of dyads and FGI, there were also situations where the interviewer favored one of the participants and seemed to neglect the others. This situation caused the perspective of the dominant participant to prevail in the discussion.

These critiques have led us to conclude that more time and care should have been given to the preparation phase of the study. Particularly, the opening of the interviews should be addressed to better set the stage and climate appropriate for sharing information. We did not clearly explain to informants the definitions of certain terms and concepts addressed in the interview. Thus, it was necessary to prepare a more detailed interview scenario and greater sensitize interviewers to stimulate discussion among all participants and encourage them to share their practices rather than just their opinions.

We also made overly optimistic assumptions regarding participants’ willingness to reveal the information in front of a group. It turned out that participants were not very eager to share information about their companies and their open strategy practices. As a result, we did not achieve in-depth insight into open strategy practices. One the reason for this is that, when preparing the research, we assumed that the interviews would be conducted in FGI. However, due to problems attracting participants, we opted for mixed techniques, including FGI, IDI, and dyads. Analyzing the interviews, we conclude that to obtain more detailed information regarding open strategy practices, we should have opted for IDIs.

We conclude that if there is no openness among the participants of an interview, then projective techniques (Clarke et al., 2019) should also be considered, as they can provide opportunities for an in-depth analysis in which the respondents reveal their opinions and attitudes. In addition, when deciding whether to use dyads or FGIs, it is advisable to apply them within the selected company to find out the opinions and attitudes of a wider group of representatives of the organization.

In future studies, various representatives from the same company should be included, and the selection of participants should take into account different organizational structure levels. A combination of dyads, FGIs, and IDIs should be applied. Also, interviewers should focus more on revealing information about open strategy practices, rather than opinions about organizational climate.

In our pilot study, we assumed that opening up the strategizing process is linked to the company’s specific organizational climate, which we named an “open climate”. In search of open climate components, we then investigated issues related to organizational climate. Our data analysis allowed us to identify 18 codes that we classified as dimensions of open climate. Data from our informants covered the following open climate dimensions: reflexivity, flexibility, freedom/autonomy of thought and speech, integration, involvement, sincerity/lack of double standards, failure-tolerant mindset, communication, initiative, cooperation, and trust. The informants recognized the last item in particular as a crucial factor in building a climate of openness. Our data also covered other dimensions with some reservations. Three of these were supportive management style, interpersonal relationships, and idea time. In some cases, however, this dimension was connected with the risk of spending too much time on discussion about ideas/concepts. Another dimension was including stakeholders in decision making – but informants related inclusiveness to internal stakeholders; external ones were usually not taken into consideration. Our data also partially covered the debates dimension. Some informants indicate that debates could be treated as an element of an open climate only if they result in any discernible outcome or benefit.

The analysis of the research material made it possible to identify additional dimensions of open climate that should be considered during the realization of the main study. Our informants suggested that responsiveness, understood as a real-time response, would be worth studying further. Informants also highlighted co-creation as an open climate dimension, but only in relation to employees or customers. Moreover, the theme of proactivity, consisting of anticipation, acting in advance, taking matters into one’s own hands, and intentionally influencing the environment, resonated very strongly as part of the climate of openness. Finally, in the context of open climate components, the dimension of openness, understood as openness to changes, various points of view, and minorities, was also mentioned.

We conclude that informants’ answers were more cognitive and perceptual than behavioral practices and experiences. Thus, in the main study, we will put a particular focus on how practices relate to the dimensions of the open climate. Such an approach would place our future study in the strategy-as-practice theory (SAP) stream of research. It will be necessary to redesign the scenario to correspond to the main theoretical categories within the SAP frame, as proposed in Table 2, and to determine whether the newly proposed interview scenario would still correspond to the conceptual categories of organizational climate derived from our data, as presented in Table 3.

The major contribution of our study is differentiating the open climate concept from the broader organizational climate concept, as well as from the creative climate concept. We indicate how these entities are different and why this differentiation matters (MacInnis, 2011), and highlight what novel insights can be compiled from such differentiation. Due to the exploratory nature of our study and the formative stage of the open climate concept, we also offer some methodological insights into designing future research on an open climate.

The theoretical contribution of our paper is twofold. First, we bring insights to the open strategy stream of research as we expand the list of open strategy enablers that have already been identified, mainly in the IT context (Morton et al., 2019; Mount et al., 2020). We redirect scholars’ attention to the subjective perceptions of specific organizational climate dimensions among organizations’ top managers, which enables opening up the strategizing process. We notice differences between this type of climate and a broader concept of organizational climate, as well the concept of a creative climate. We term this kind of climate an “open climate”, and by delineating its dimensions, we contribute to the existing body of knowledge concerning organizational culture, especially open culture, and organizational climate.

Ehrhart and Schneider claim that organizational culture is a broader construct than organizational climate and is closely aligned with the values and beliefs that manifest themselves in almost all aspects of organizational life (2016, p.7). Furthermore, according to Li et al., open culture includes the open vision, values, mindset, and cultural atmosphere that enterprises need to build in order to move from closed innovation model to open innovation model (2022, p.3). We argue that our concept of open climate enriches the discourse on open culture issues by proposing the dimensions for an open strategizing process. Organizational climate reflects subjective perceptions of an organization, and our research presents managers’ subjective perceptions of those dimensions, enabling greater openness in the organization during the strategizing process.

Second, we differentiate open climate from the organizational climate categories, conceptualizing it using insights from the open strategy field of research. Most dimensions of organizational climate related to openness that have been previously studied are internally oriented (Bertels et al., 2011; Gold et al., 2014; Phudphad et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2005). Our data suggest that some open climate dimensions are also externally oriented.

Through our pilot study, we were able to ascertain that trust is a crucial factor in building a climate of openness, which is in line with the previous work of Ekvall (1996) and Bertels et al. (2011). We found that a climate of openness is built on reflexivity, flexibility, involvement, communication, and integration, which are all in line with the findings of Patterson et al. (2005), Bertels et al. (2011), and Phudphad et al. (2017). The following dimensions of open climate are cooperation, freedom/autonomy of thought and speech, sincerity and a lack of double standards, a failure-tolerant mindset, and initiative, which correspond with the dimensions of organizational climate studied by Kangis et al., (2000), Rožman and Štrukelj (2020), Phudphad et al. (2017), and Gold et al. (2014). Detailed differences between organizational, creative and open climate are presented in Table 4.

Our study also provides some methodological insights as we proved the usefulness of qualitative studies in investigating a concept in the initial phases of its development. This step will allow us to design tools for further qualitative and quantitative studies of open climate that reflect the complexity of this concept. Our study can also serve as a preliminary step in the process of open climate scale development.

Our pilot study was a first step towards designing a research procedure to investigate the open climate phenomenon and its links with an open strategy. We treat it as a small-scale exploratory study with several limitations, particularly its limited scope and small sample size. Thus, it can be considered a preliminary work.

Our study is contextual, as we have investigated only Polish companies. Thus, some country-specific factors may influence our data on open climate development and its operationalization. Indeed, other studies have confirmed that national culture has an impact on transparency (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2013) and inclusiveness (Stoermer et al., 2016), and needs to be considered in investigating openness (Adobor, 2021).

One factor that needs to be considered is the level of social trust. In a recent study in Poland, only the minority (19%) indicated willingness to trust other people, while 77% believed that “cautiousness is needed in relations with others” (CBOS, 2022). This view has changed only slightly over the past 20 years and thus may be treated as a general social feature (Ibid). As for trust in a business context, opinions are mixed, with 34% declaring that being trustful pays off and 35% being cautious (Ibid). Further investigation and comparison of the impact of social trust in other countries may yield insight into potential contextual influences on this study’s findings.

Despite its preliminary nature, we believe our pilot study can be instructive and helpful for scholars wishing to advance future studies on the relationship between open climate and an open strategy. Based on our findings, we suggest scholars should consider the challenging pragmatics of a recruitment process among managers and offer more personalized and valuable incentives to increase managers’ willingness to participate in a study. We also suggest changing the units of analysis - future studies on open strategy should search for openness practices among ecosystems of firms, not just among individual managers. One way this could be done is using the SAP framework and identify practices that enhance openness.