Impact of Creativity and Innovation Drives of Employees on Organisational Sustainability

Abstract

The Indian automobile industry provides a unique platform to carry out this research. It is the largest and most competitive in the world. Over the past decade, it has undergone several changes by adopting innovative technology and creative process management to keep up with the competitive market and the growing demand. The industry contributes significantly to the Indian economy as it is closely associated with other sectors. The automobile industry in the car manufacturing sector is an assembly-based industry where various components are manufactured by different units located in India and abroad. In this sense, the automobile industry has a global impact. The need to adopt a robust, sustainable trajectory of innovation has created urgency in the automotive industry, especially in developing lower-emission vehicles like driverless, electric and fuel-cell-driven cars, which have presented a significant challenge to the car manufacturers. Thus, there is a need for creative employees and continuous organisational innovation to attain a competitive edge over other companies. Seminal works in developed nations have advocated that organisational sustainability is mainly influenced by organisational innovation and employee creativity through various drivers impacting it. However, the past studies emphasise that drivers of employee creativity, and drivers of organisational innovation enhances employee creativity and organisational innovation, which are scarce in India. Thus, this research examined the impact of drivers of employee creativity, drivers of organisational innovation on employee creativity and organisational innovation for attaining organisational sustainability in the Indian automobile industry. Specifically, the study evaluates percptions of Indian automobile manufacturing units' employees to build a logical relationship among the study variables. A survey was conducted among the employees of the Indian automobile industry across India. A structured questionnaire was distributed to elicit the opinion of employees on the study variables. The responses obtained were analysed using SPSS 20 and AMOS 20. The findings reveal that employee creativity and organisational innovation positively impact organisational sustainability. It is also found that innovative work behaviour mediates the relationship between employee creativity and organisational innovation with the moderating role of rewards and recognition. So, organisational innovation has positive impact on organisational sustainability with the mediating effect of organisational performance and moderating influences of the facilitating environment. Thus, this research provides a holistic framework that may serve as a blueprint for the Indian automobile industry to attain organisational sustainability.