Emotional and learning capability and their impact on product innovativeness and firm performance

Abstract

Learning capability, as a part of organizational capabilities, is an important factor for product innovativeness. The antecedents of the learning capability of the firm should be expanded to leverage the understanding of how firms can develop new products with success. The human resources management and organization behavior literature indicates that emotional capability of a firm has an impact on learning capabilities. Nevertheless, emotional capability in general and its impact on learning capability, product innovativeness, and firm performance in particular is not discussed in the technology and innovation management (TIM) literature. In our investigation of 106 firms, we found that: (1) a firm's level of emotional capability (including the dynamics of display freedom, experiencing, reconciliation, and identification constructs) has a significant affect on the firm's learning capability (composed of the managerial commitment, systems perspective, openness and experimentation, and knowledge transfer and integration); (2) a firm's emotional capability influences its product innovativeness via learning capability; and (3) a firm's product innovativeness, influenced by emotional and learning capability, significantly impacts the firm performance.