On the Validity of M-SWOT for Innovation Climate Development

The idea behind M-SWOT is to assess the organization by way of mapping the participants' responses to open and general questions onto specific, research based models in a particular domain; in this case innovation climate. The present article attempts to conceptually validate SWOT by way of providing a link to the Organizational Climate Measure (OCM), and to demonstrate discriminatory validity of SWOT towards other related, but unspecific models (the Job Characteristics Model (JCM)), based on SWOT interviews with 15 managers in two highly innovative Norwegian companies. The hypotheses are that there will be a positive correlation between the OCM dimensions and the SWOT statements; that the four quadrants of OCM will cover the SWOT statements in a particular order, and that more SWOT statements will be aligned with OCM than JCM. All hypotheses were confirmed. The results indicate that an M-SWOT approach to innovation climate development is viable with respect to the type of content that the SWOT interviews elicit.

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