Do Quality and Innovation Compete Against or Complement Each Other? The Moderating Role of an Information Exchange Climate

This study contributes to the authors' understanding of the relationship between quality and innovation by applying a climate theory approach. They explain the reasons why an innovation climate negatively influences quality performance and why a quality climate has a negative influence on radical innovative performance. The authors then show that within a high information exchange climate, the innovation climate improves quality performance and the quality climate improves radical innovative performance. In practical terms, their findings suggest that quality managers can improve their organizations' quality performance and radical innovative performance simultaneously by nurturing an information exchange climate in their corporate departments.