Creativity factors and innovation in manufacturing companies, Johor

Abstract

Since the past decades, creative industry and innovation model have been introduced and implemented in manufacturing industry in developing our country’s economy. However, the truth about the fact that innovation can affect the organizational performance has long been questioned. Therefore, there have been a substantial number of researchers that had studied the relationship between creativity and innovation with organizational performance in the industry. Although the number of studies investigating on this issue is growing, researches in determining the relationship between creativity factors and innovation moderated by environmental aspects in bringing profitable growth are very limited. This research attempted to investigate the factors that enhance the innovation in creating profitable growth among 54 manufacturing companies that act as the main key players in Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA). By using quantitative methods, the survey forms were distributed randomly to the employees who are working in the executive level and above for each company. The data were analyzed with the help of Statistical Process for Social Science software. The descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was used to achieve the research objectives. There are six factors of creativity adapted from KEYS instrument found by Amabile (1996) represented in this research namely organizational encouragement, supervisory encouragement, freedom, challenging work, resources and work group support. Besides that, the environmental aspects have also been discussed as giving the moderating effect between innovation and profitable growth. The findings also revealed strong influence of supervisory encouragement, challenging work and resources on innovation. In addition, the results have also proven that there is a positive relationship between innovation and profitable growth that is mediated by competitiveness factor.