Conclusion and contributions
By drawing on a comprehensive model of open innovation, this study contributes to theory and practice. The findings of this study can potentially provide inputs to the policy-makers in India and help the country realize its innovation-led growth and development. The study extends research in the area of leadership, culture, absorptive capacity and open innovation. Moreover, it clarifies the process and a conditional factor in the association between empowering leadership and open innovation, thus presenting an advanced model in this domain. The theoretical contribution of this study is three-fold. First, it contributes to the extant literature in the areas of leadership, organizational culture and open innovation. Past studies (see Jung et al., 2003; Sarros et al., 2008) have attempted to connect these areas, however, such models in the area of open innovation did not exist. This study thus is a step forward to focus the attention of researchers in this area. Second, this study established the influence of empowering leadership on open innovation. Although the extant literature has highlighted the role of leadership in shaping innovation (Rosing et al., 2011), this study is one of the first in the area of open innovation to draw the linkages with empowering leadership and test them empirically. The study thus sheds light on the role of empowering leadership in open innovation. Third, this study has brought clarity to the leadership-open innovation link by explaining the mediating mechanism of organizational learning culture. It also contributes by validating past studies that have examined the role of empowering leadership in promoting a culture that supports knowledge inflows and outflows (Xue et al., 2011).
