Employee Creativity as Moderation between Ambidexterity Organization and Innovation Performance: SMEs in East Kalimantan

¹ Politeknik Negeri Samarinda, Samarinda, Indonesia
² Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: etwin@polnes.ac.id

Abstract

Product innovation is a point of interest for consumers to buy products. Organizational ambidexterity is the company's ability to pursue innovation through exploitative and explorative means, thereby influencing employee innovative performance. Technology readiness by organizations and employees is a benchmark for the success of product development. The problem that often occurs is that not all employees are ready for technology and innovation which has an impact on increasing innovation and product performance. Product innovation certainly cannot be separated from employee creativity. Creativity is important in creating competitive advantage and creative industry erformance. The purpose of this research is to investigate the importance of developing organizational ambidexterity and organizational technology readiness as well as employee creativity in improving organizational innovation performance. By doing this, this research tested the moderation of employee creativity (EC) on the relationship between organizational ambidexterity (AO) and innovation performance (IP). By applying a quantitative and cross- sectional design and analyzing the results of a questionnaire on 100 SMEs in East Kalimantan, it was found that AO had a positive and significant effect on IP, while EC had a positive and significant effect on AO but had a negative and insignificant effect on IP. EC moderates and has a positive and significant influence on the relationship between AO and IP as well as AO and IP. This research contributes to the advancement of organizational capability theory by adding the important role of employee creativity in achieving innovation performance.