Abstract

This paper aimed to identify factors that promote innovation in Japan’s radio industry, where innovation has stagnated for many years. First, we examined previous studies on top management leadership characteristics, organizational unit coordination mechanisms, senior management teams, and environmental dynamism as key concepts for innovation creation. We also interviewed top managers in the Japanese radio industry to develop specific hypotheses. We tested our hypotheses by conducting a questionnaire survey with 157 middle managers of Japanese radio stations; we used multiple regression analysis to examine the effect of each variable on exploratory and exploitative innovation. Our main findings revealed that management, by exception of transactional leadership, formalization and connectedness of organizational unit coordination mechanisms, and perceived environmental dynamism, positively affect exploratory and exploitative innovation in the radio industry. In contrast, the inspirational motivation of transformational leadership and social integration of the senior team negatively affected exploratory innovation. This study’s academic contribution is to identify the unique organizational factors that drive innovation in the Japanese radio industry by quantitatively testing the original hypothesis derived from the interview survey. Our results showed an urgent need to develop organizational human resources for senior management. Finally, the limitations of this study and future research were discussed.