Becoming a Sustainable Organization: Focusing on Process, Administrative Innovation and Human Resource Practices

Abstract

Despite the importance of constant product improvement to becoming a sustainable organization, the relationship between different types of innovation and new product development has received little attention. This article contributes to prior research by proposing a necessary condition for successful product development, which increases organizational sustainability. While it has been widely argued that technological innovation is an important factor for new product development, we contribute by illustrating the importance of process and administrative innovation, which changes an organization’s way of doing business. By analyzing survey responses from 2127 Korean firms, we empirically demonstrate that process and administrative innovation increase the likelihood of achieving new product development goals. Our findings also show that innovation-supporting human resource practices such as talent development programs and work autonomy increase the effectiveness of process and administrative innovations. Overall, we suggest that organizations are able to achieve a sustainable presence in the product market when they constantly innovate the way they run themselves. Additionally, in order to manage such innovation, organizations should nurture a creative environment by devising effective, innovation-supporting human resource practices.

Linking Organizational Ambidexterity and Performance: The Drivers of Sustainability in High-Tech Firms

“…They mainly deal with these by adaptive processes-firms have the ability to apply their existing assets, status, and capacity to explore new technologies and markets to construct and reconstruct organizational resources to pursue existing and new opportunities [18][19][20][21]. As elaborated on by some scholars engaging in organizational learning theory research, and based on the research of Yamakawa et al [21], exploration creates something other than the existing knowledge of an organization (e.g., new knowledge) by using new methods to experiment with technologies, business processes, or markets and to search for new organizational practices, norms, and systems [22][23][24]. This theory assumes that exploitation builds trust in certain of the firm's activities, such as the refining of existing knowledge [21], the use and improvement of existing capabilities, and a focus on technologies, processes, and products within existing markets [5].…”

“…Therefore, exploration enables firms to realize ongoing market growth through overcoming path-dependencies and inertia. The exploration of new resources and capabilities through the development of new products can improve proximity [4,[22][23][24] and the response to local customers, and can increase the speed to market [5,42]. However, if firms seldom engage in exploitation or activities related to organizational survival (threshold capabilities, consolidated capabilities, the refining or expansion of existing capabilities, technologies, and models), this may reduce their chance of survival [28].…”

HR Practices for Supporting Interpersonal Trust and Its Consequences for Team Collaboration and Innovation

“…Team members' drive and innovation are the core components of state-of-the-art solutions. Talent management and work autonomy are a crucial part of HR practices that foster innovation [109]. One main aspect refers to a good organizational climate that influences innovation [109,110].…”

“…Talent management and work autonomy are a crucial part of HR practices that foster innovation [109]. One main aspect refers to a good organizational climate that influences innovation [109,110]. High-performance work practices advance employees' creativity when the team is cohesive and collaboration goes well [40].…”

Managerial innovations: Approach to definition and classification

“…Используется для отделения данного типа инноваций от продуктовых и технологических инноваций и описывает инновации, направленные на повышение результативности и эффективности управленческих процессов компании и ее административных систем [Клевцова, 2017;Kimberly, Evanisko, 1981;Damanpour, Evan, 1984;Bantel, Jackson, 1989;Cho, Lee, Shin, 2019] Управленческие инновации Используется для описания управленческих изменений (что и как делают менеджеры компаний) [Чечурина, 2010;Карлик, Платонов, 2015;Kimberly, Evanisko, 1981;Hamel, 2006;Hamel, Breen, 2007;Walker, Damanpour, Devece, 2011;Damanpour, Aravind, 2011;Hamidi, Benabdeljlil, 2015;Gobble, 2018;Khosravi, Newton, Rezvani, 2019;Zhang, Khan, 2019;Ceptureanu, Ceptureanu, 2019] Административные инновации отделяются от продуктовых/сервисных и технологических инноваций. В [Kimberly, Evanisko, 1981;Damanpour, Evan, 1984] указывается, что, в отличие от продуктовых/сервисных инноваций, которые внедряются для удовлетворения потребностей клиентов, а также технологических инноваций, осуществляемых для изменения производственных процессов и производимой продукции, административные инновации ориентированы на результативность и эффективность управленческих процессов компании и ее административных систем.…”