Management innovation and firm innovation performance: a moderated moderation effects of absorptive capacity and environmental dynamism

Abstract

Innovation plays an influential role in the firm's development and sustainability in an exhaustively aggressive business environment. Yet extant literature has not considered the influence of management innovation (MI) on firm innovation performance (FIP) in emerging economies. Building upon the dynamic capabilities view, we construct a moderated moderation model to address how MI affects FIP. Explicitly, we investigate whether the linkage amongst MI and FIP is contingent on absorptive capacity (AC) and environmental dynamism (ED). Using a dataset from 314 firms operating in the manufacturing and service industries in China. Our findings through hierarchical linear modelling reveal that: (1) MI affects FIP positively; (2) AC affects the linkage amongst MI and FIP positively; (3) AC impacts on the linkage amongst MI and FIP upsurges when ED is high than low. Our research offers new insights on how MI enhances the innovation performance of firms operating in emerging economies.

Keywords:

• management innovation
• absorptive capacity
• environmental dynamism
• firm innovation performance

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all the funding agencies (i.e., the Scientific Research Foundation of Chongqing Technology and Business University-grant no. 950319146; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China-grant no. 71672021), the editors, and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions. We also appreciate the effort of the business captains who agreed to participate in the survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Scientific Research Foundation of Chongqing Technology and Business University: [Grant Number 950319146]; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 71672021].