Exploring organisational learning and knowledge management factors underlying innovation effectiveness

Abstract

Innovation is widely seen as a basis for competition and knowledge plays a key role in underlying its effectiveness in the present economy which is knowledge-based. The innovation process is highly complex and uncertain; it is fraught with ambiguity, risks, errors and failures. How organisations respond to these downsides is not well reflected in the literature. They are often placed in a black box and left empirically unexplored. This researcher attempts to penetrate this box with an exploratory empirical study consisting of two research phases rooted in positivism. In Phase 1, a questionnaire survey is carried out with error management culture, organisational learning and knowledge management as antecedents of innovation effectiveness. The survey data collected are deductively analysed to test these four constructs. In Phase 2, the same data are inductively explored to determine the factors underlying innovation effectiveness. From deduction, knowledge management is found to be the sole antecedent of innovation effectiveness, affirming the importance of knowledge to innovation. From induction, autonomy and trust are found to be key factors underlying innovation effectiveness. Their attributes in this study are collaboration, knowledge sharing and control (for autonomy) and behaviour, relationship and reciprocal faith (for trust). The contributions from this study are – (a) an empirical confirmation on the importance of knowledge to innovation and (b) the derivation of autonomy and trust as key factors underlying its effectiveness. In addition, it contributes to research methodology with an exploratory integration of deduction and induction as complimentary modes of inference to facilitate the understanding of complex subjects like innovation. As a positivist research does not answer the causal how and why of innovation, it is recommended that future research on a similar topic moves to critical realism as a philosophical realm when an ontological dimension can be added to the epistemological exploration posited in positivism as found in this study.