THE IMPACT OF TEAM CLIMATE, PERSONAL INITIATIVE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY ON ORGANISATIONS’ INNOVATIVENESS AND INNOVATION PERFORMANCE IN SOFTWARE COMPANIES
Abstract
The organisational climate is a significant influencing factor of the innovative capabilities and the innovation performance of organisations, and consequently it affects their long-term sustainability, performance, and profitability. Nevertheless, different levers of organisational climate have been mostly investigated individually in the literature, without knowing which climate factors contribute more to (or actually harm) innovativeness and further on to innovations’ business performance. Therefore, this study takes a novel approach by investigating the joint effect of six established climate constructs (Business Vision, Participative Safety, Task Orientation, and Support for Innovation, as components of Team Climate Inventory, plus Personal Initiative and Psychological Safety) on organisations’ innovative capabilities and innovation performance. Furthermore, the present study proposes and validates two literature-based constructs (Innovativeness and Innovation Performance) tailored to the software industry, to consistently capture innovative capabilities and performance. The study is applied on a sample of 1684 employees and 56 top managers, representing 56 established local and multinational companies in the Romanian software industry, thereby investigating an industry and region of increasing global relevance, but greatly underrepresented in current literature. The results offer a more complete insight into which climate factors should be leveraged by managers to enhance innovation and performance. Personal Initiative is demonstrated to be the strongest influential factor, while Business Vision, Support for Innovation and Psychological Safety can also positively influence software organisations’ innovativeness and innovation performance. Surprisingly, Participative Safety has a negative influence, while Task Orientation has no impact on innovativeness. JEL classification: J24; O15; O31 Article History: Received: May 4, 2026; Reviewed: July 31, 2026;Accepted: September 4, 2026; Available online: September 25, 2026.