Effect of sustainability-oriented innovation practices on the overall organisational performance: an empirical examination

Abstract

One major means to address corporate sustainability practices in organisations are sustainability-oriented innovation practices, which tend to result in significantly improved products, services, processes or even management systems. Prior research has widely discussed the relevant issues about integrating sustainability aspects into innovation process; however, little empirical research has been conducted to analyse the link between sustainability-oriented innovation practices and the overall organisational performance. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the underlying structure of sustainability-oriented innovation practices as well as their effects on the particular performance dimensions (i.e. economic performance, quality performance, innovation performance, environmental performance and social performance). The large-scale web-based survey yielded 266 usable responses encompassing both the manufacturing and service industries across 5 countries: Germany, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain. The results of the regression analysis demonstrate that sustainability-oriented innovation practices are positively related with the overall organisational performance. The empirical evidence suggests that when organisations strongly emphasise sustainability practices, they can improve both economic and non-financial performance. From a practical perspective, the findings of the study may provide a clue regarding how organisations can embed sustainability aspects in their innovation processes with the aim of improving their performance.

Keywords:

• corporate sustainability
• sustainability-oriented innovation
• organisational performance
• empirical study

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the following individuals who contributed in many invaluable ways to the realisation of the international survey: Beata Starzyńska, Poznan University of Technology; Carmen Jaca, Tecnun, University of Navarra; Jovan Filipović, University of Belgrade; Michael Brusch, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences; and Wieslaw Urban, Bialystok Technical University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.