Firm’s sustainable innovation and competitive advantage: examining the role of leadership display of curiosity, organizational innovation culture and leadership support for innovation

This study explores the role of sustainable innovation (SI) on competitive advantage within the tourism industry, while simultaneously examining the relationship of leadership display of curiosity, organizational innovation culture, and leadership support for innovation in promoting firms’ SI and competitive advantage. The study utilized data from 201 employees from different tourism organizations and analyzed them through Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), with SmartPLS 4 software. The findings demonstrate that SI is a significant driver for competitive advantage, accounting for 46.9% of its variance. Furthermore, leadership display of curiosity, organizational innovation culture and leadership support for innovation, collectively explain 53.5% of the variance in SI. Notably, leadership display of curiosity promotes SI, both directly and indirectly, by fostering a supportive organizational innovation culture and strengthening perceived leadership support for innovation. These results reveal that companies can use SI as a business strategy to achieve a competitive advantage and highlight the cultivation of leadership display of curiosity as a critical resource for realizing greater competitive advantage. Leadership display of curiosity promotes SI both directly and indirectly by cultivating an organizational innovation culture and strengthening leadership support for innovation. The implications of this study are to encourage curiosity among leaders as a valuable resource that a firm can utilize to reach its desired goals. The study contributes to the research domain that focuses on factors associated with SI and competitive advantage.