– The aim of this paper is to address both the socio-moral climate and how teams process debate and decision comprehensiveness as pre-conditions for team innovation.
– A total of 67 teams comprising 413 participants were surveyed. Data were analyzed with a multiple-step multiple-mediation procedure.
– The socio-moral climate was positively related to innovation. The positive relation between the socio-moral climate and innovation was mediated stepwise through debate and decision comprehensiveness.
– To overcome the limitations of a cross-sectional design, future research opportunities exist in the longitudinal evaluation of participatory socio-moral climates and comparisons between organizations. Debate and decision comprehensiveness can be further studied using behavior-based methodological designs, such as observation.
– From this study, practitioners can learn of the needs and opportunities for participative approaches when managing innovation in teams. Promoting a socio-moral climate of cooperation, communication, openness, appreciation, trust and respect and leaving open the possibility that debating can help integrative decision comprehensiveness and thus innovation.
– This paper expands the literature on organizational climate, debate, decision comprehensiveness, and innovation. On the one hand, the results empirically linked the socio-moral climate, a theoretically well-founded climate construct, to process variables. On the other hand, the literature on debate and decision comprehensiveness was expanded by adding the socio-moral climate as a pre-condition of debate and decision comprehensiveness. Furthermore, both were linked to a crucial outcome variable, innovation.
