International Journal of Innovation Management

Purpose: This study aims to analyse the influence of dynamic environments on technology and market-sensing capability. It also aims to examine the influence of technology and market-sensing capability on innovation performance. Besides, it aims to explore the influence of innovation performance on the organisation’s financial performance. It also aims to examine the influence of technology and market-sensing capability on the organisation’s financial performance. Design/methodology/approach: The research model was tested using a structural equation modelling design based on survey data from 183 Saudi companies from different sectors, used by software (SPSS v. 28 and SmartPLS v. 4). Findings: This study shows that dynamic environments strongly influence both financial and innovation performance. However, this study shows that innovation performance does not directly affect financial performance. Furthermore, this study shows that dynamic environments strongly influence both technology and market-sensing capability. Likewise, this study shows that both technology and market-sensing capability strongly influence financial performance. However, this study shows that both technology and market-sensing capability do not directly affect innovation performance. Originality/value: This study has demonstrated that dynamic environments will have a direct effect on the financial performance of companies by compelling them to allocate their resources more strategically and flexibly in order to adapt to the changing and unpredictable conditions of dynamic environments. Moreover, this study has also demonstrated that dynamic environments will have a direct effect on the technology and market-sensing capability of organisations. This will motivate organisations to gather and analyse information about customers, competitors, and market trends, and to use this information to identify and exploit opportunities for innovation, differentiation, and value creation for customers and stakeholders. In addition to the previous findings, this study has also shown that dynamic environments will improve the technology and market-sensing capability of organisations. This will inspire organisations to collect and analyse information about the needs, preferences, and behaviours of customers, the strategies, actions, and strengths of competitors, and the trends, opportunities, and threats of the market, and to use this information to recognize and leverage opportunities for innovation, differentiation, and value creation for customers and stakeholders. Furthermore, this capability allows organisations to use their dynamic capabilities to innovate with their resources and competencies, which are essential for gaining competitive advantage and superior performance in dynamic environments.

This study examines the influence of environmental commitment (EC) on Tunisian firms’ export intensity and utilising the resource-based view (RBV) framework. Using firm-level data from the 2020 World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES), it explores the direct and indirect effects of EC on export intensity through product and process innovation. The findings highlight that EC plays a crucial role in fostering both product and process innovation, underscoring its strategic significance in driving overall innovation within firms. Additionally, EC and product innovation are identified as key factors positively contributing to exports, emphasising the importance of a strong EC orientation and a focus on product innovation for enhancing export activities. Notably, the presence of quality certification influences the relationship between EC and process innovation, weakening the impact of EC in that context. This finding underscores the nuanced dynamics between EC, process innovation, and quality certification. Overall, this study highlights EC as a strategic approach for enhancing firm innovation and promoting export orientation, providing empirical evidence and insights derived from the specific context of Tunisia. Embracing EC and aligning it with innovation and export strategies enables firms and policymakers to foster sustainable growth, enhance competitiveness, and contribute to a greener and more inclusive future.

Drawing on the Conservation of Resources and Social Exchange Theories, this study examines the relationship between employee engagement for innovation (EEI) and innovative performance (IP) through discretionary efforts (DE) and knowledge sharing (KS). We collected data from 202 peer dyads of 15 universities in Pakistan and used SmartPLS 4 for hypotheses testing. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between EEI, DE, KS and IP. In contrast, mediation mechanism via DE and KS did not show the expected mediation effects. This outcome can be attributed to the unique socio-cultural context in which we collected the data. This work focussed on employees working in a collectivist culture within a patriarchal society, where traditional hierarchical structures and values influence the dynamics between EEI, DE, KS and IP. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications and the directions for future research.

Digital transformation is a core weapon to promote the sustainable development of environmental service enterprises. This research presents a pioneering analysis of the primary sources and internal mechanisms underlying the performance impact of digital transformation in Chinese listed environmental service companies from 2009 to 2019. The empirical results show that digital transformation can significantly improve firm performance. Furthermore, digital products, digital operations and digital talent were found to have the most significant effect, while digital services and digital marketing have a weaker effect. The mediating effect demonstrates that digital transformation can indirectly promote the performance of environmental service enterprises by improving the green technology innovation, and this influence tends to strengthen. In addition, this performance effect is affected by different enterprise types, with the effect being more pronounced in state-owned enterprises than in private enterprises. These findings have important guiding significance for the intelligent development of environmental service industry.

Green innovation is garnering increasing attention in business, academic and policy circles as a route to sustainable growth and development. Governments have introduced a range of policies to encourage and enable firms to introduce and expand their offerings of environmental friendly goods and services. While environmental regulation has been shown to be an important driver of green innovation, little is known about whether other types of polices, such as financial incentives, technical and marketing supports, and assistance with identifying potential markets, are important to firms of all sizes at different stages of the green innovation process (i.e., at product/service launch vs. product/service expansion). Using data from the European Commission, the results show that policy support to identify markets or customers is deemed important by firms of all sizes to introduce green goods and services. However, this support is no longer perceived as important to expand firms’ green portfolio. This suggests firms capitalise by using their existing markets or customers. The results do not lend support to the view of small firms as the most resource constrained and hence needing the greatest policy supports. Overall, the results point to the need for a variety of policy supports targeted at (1) firms of different sizes and (2) by stage of the green innovation process.

This study addresses the development of new integrated product–service systems (PSSs). Most empirical research on the organisation of development processes has focussed on new product development, new service development, software development and new business model development in isolation; however, the development of new, complex PSSs that require the integration of these development efforts has received limited research attention. We address this literature gap through a qualitative, in-depth study of five firms operating in the business-to-business context. The findings demonstrate that all new PSS development processes did not implement and use one specific process model. Instead, the organisation of new PSS development processes was contingent upon the type of services to be offered and the target business model. This study proposes a contingency framework for development processes that provides considerable guidance to managers searching for ways to facilitate the processes of developing new PSSs.

Although firms rely on employees’ innovative work behaviour and effective leadership to achieve service innovation performance, these relations remain underexplored, especially regarding digital leadership. We conceptualise a digital leader’s capabilities and explore influences on innovative work behaviour and service innovation performance, using the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical lens. Applying a multi-method exploratory research design, our qualitative results, based on 34 expert interviews, deliver a taxonomy of digital leadership capabilities along three dimensions. With 249 survey participants, we quantitatively tested dimensional influences individually (multidimensional view) and collectively (unidimensional view) using structural equation modelling. In line with our mediation results, both views are significantly positively related to innovative work behaviour; still, only the unidimensional view significantly influences service innovation performance. Our results underpin the comprehensive character of digital leadership capabilities contributing to innovation research with a new “antecedal” perspective. We also provide practical relevance by revealing innovation-effective leadership capabilities.

One remaining challenge in research on variable risk-taking by organizations is to reconcile mutually contradictory arguments on associations between organisational slack and organisational degree of risk-taking. We focus on moderating (rather than moderated) influences of organisational slack to argue that slack governs the strength of the association by unleashing the discretion of top management teams (TMTs), while the direction of the association depends on the characteristics of TMTs. Accordingly, as slack increases, organizations led by TMTs characterised by high-risk preference pursue risky search initiatives more aggressively, while decisions by TMTs characterised with low-risk preference grow more risk-avoiding. Our empirical examination of the Japanese electronic appliances industry from 2006 to 2017 empirically supports the argument with endogeneity robust inference on the coefficient of the slack variable. Organisational slack alleviates concerns over constraints on decisions, thereby unleashing discretion to pursue as well as to avoid search risk-taking.

The literature on corporate entrepreneurship has discussed the role of entrepreneurship orientation (EO) and self-efficacy in enhancing venture creation and a firm’s growth. In contrast, the effect of EO and self-efficacy on project performance outcomes has been relatively overlooked. In this study, we examine how an individual’s entrepreneurship orientation (IEO), entrepreneurship self-efficacy (ESE), and entrepreneurship management skills (EMS) affect both entrepreneurship projects and non-entrepreneurship projects. Using a sample of 308 observations, our analyses reveal that while various dimensions of IEO, ESE, and EMS can significantly influence project performance, the effect is more pronounced for non-entrepreneurship projects. Furthermore, in all three ESE dimensions, we find that the effect on individual project performance is almost double the effect on team project performance. This implies that individuals consider their efforts and contributions to be more significant than the collective team efforts when completing a group project. This study contributes to the literature by providing a new perspective to assess the effect of each dimension of IEO, ESE, and EMS at both the individual level and the project level. For students, entrepreneurs, and policymakers, this study presents important insights into two areas: the influence of entrepreneurship education on an individual’s performance on individual projects and team projects; and how entrepreneurial characteristics can be nurtured to produce good entrepreneurs and project managers. This is especially significant for emerging countries, where entrepreneurship education plays a key role in supporting economic transition, promoting the private sector, and encouraging the establishment of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This paper examines the antecedents and consequences of a firm’s absorptive capacity for innovation management control (ACIMC). Absorptive capacity, defined as an organisational-level capability to identify, assimilate, and exploit external knowledge, has predominantly been applied to technological knowledge. In this paper, we focus on external knowledge in relation to innovation management control (IMC), a management task that combines innovation management and management control. In addition, we apply our conceptualisation of ACIMC to the development of hybrid offerings, consisting of product and service components. Results of a survey among companies in Europe support our hypotheses that ACIMC (with four dimensions: Acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation) indirectly influences financial and innovation performance through hybrid product-service IMC. This paper ends with recommendations for innovation management practice and theory.