Building Sustainable Innovation Through Changes in Employee Behavior and Organizational Capabilities

Abstract

Recent research has highlighted the potential of employee behavior and organizational capabilities to enhance the sustainable renewal and change process. Research investigating various dimensions of employee behavior and organizational capabilities and their effect on value creation in a resource constrained environment is scarce. This is especially true for the effect on sustainable innovation, a topic that requires further investigation. Thus, this chapter makes a contribution to the literature by investigating what dimensions of employee behavior and organizational capabilities are connected to the sustainable innovation of organizations. This chapter provides an empirical examination of the topic for 160 Finnish organizations. The empirical evidence shows that employees’ role clarity, citizenship, and motivation are connected to the sustainable innovation of an organization. Second, the more an organization invests in organization capabilities (in terms of communication), the more likely it is to achieve sustainable innovation. The practical contribution of these findings is to increase the understanding of the determinants of sustainable innovation and thereby assist practitioners in constructing their value propositions.