Organisational unlearning, organisational flexibility and innovation capability: an empirical study of SMEs in China

Abstract

The increasing variability and turbulence of the external environment have brought more uncertainty to enterprises’ survival and development. To enhance the capability of adapting to the external environment, enterprises have to constantly improve their organisational flexibility. Organisational unlearning has positive effects on organisational flexibility since it can eliminate the internal factors that conflict with the external environment. In this paper, a conceptual model is established and examined based on the data of 248 questionnaires from Chinese enterprises to reveal the relationships among organisational unlearning, organisational flexibility and organisational innovation capability. Our research results reveal that organisational unlearning has significant effects on both incremental innovation and radical innovation. Furthermore, we also find that organisational flexibility partly mediates the relationship between organisational unlearning and incremental innovation, and fully mediates the relationship between organisational unlearning and radical innovation.