How innovation climate drives management styles in each stage of the organization lifecycle

Purpose: Organizations that offer services based on knowledge and innovation consider their recruitment process as strategic. The purpose of this paper is to consider that organizational lifecycle is related with the management styles through innovation climate and human dimension of recruitment. Design/methodology/approach: The authors utilized two methods proposed by Adizes (1976, 1979, 2004). The first one is an inductive, exploratory method with a quantitative approach. The second one utilizes a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews. The quantitative approach was performed with a questionnaire via internet. The target was executive managers from organizations with more than ten employees, which are offering professional, scientific and technical services. The authors obtained 170 responses. Findings: Results show that the majority of organizations balance open innovation and control, trending to the first one. During the first stages of the organizational lifecycle, decision-making principally relays on the founder’s open innovation strategies, whereas in the last stages administrative-based control is predominant. Research limitations/implications: The authors must highlight that this study has been performed for the case of services companies placed only in Mexico. Then, the extrapolation and generalization of results should be dealt carefully. Practical implications: The authors consider the questionnaire very useful for the introduction of open innovation strategies for human resources managers, since it takes into account organizational lifecycle in their human dimension of recruitment processes, it helps to design training and retention programs for employees, and avoids premature aging of the company. Social implications: Given that today, knowledge management and innovation have become strategic assets of companies, it is necessary a change of mentality in many organizations that facilitates a new perception on the development of innovation. This will only be possible with the firm support of the management of the company and the involvement of all employees in this new task. Originality/value: Several studies analyze management styles in each stage of organization lifecycle, although they do not link the obtained information to open innovation and human dimension of the recruitment process. The authors work applies the questionnaire of Adizes (1976, 1979, 2004), which relates the organizational life cycle and the management style and discloses the proper management styles with recruiting, training and retention programs to keep flexibility above control to nurture open innovation.