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

Hyejin Cho, Pyoungsoo Lee and Choong Ho Shin
Additional contact information
Hyejin Cho: Department of Business Administration, Korea University, Anam-ro 145, Seoul 02841, Korea
Pyoungsoo Lee: Department of Business Administration, Kyonggi University, Gwanggyosan-ro 154-42, Suwon 16227, Gyeonggi, Korea
Choong Ho Shin: Department of IT Management, Kyungmin University, Seobu-ro 545, Euijeongbu 11618, Gyeonggi, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 13, 1-17

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.

Keywords: process innovation; administrative innovation; product development; human resource policies; organizational sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3554/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3554/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:13:p:3554-:d:243684

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().