The effects of open innovation on employee grit and thiriving at work and innovation performance

In the study, it is aimed to examine the effects of open innovation applications that have been developing rapidly in the last 20 years on the employee grit, thiriving at work and innovation performance of employees, which form the core of the innovation process. In the realization of this study, which is among the limited number of studies examining the effects of open innovation at the individual level, first of all, scale adaptation studies have been carried out to introduce the variables in the research model to the Turkish literature. Then, with the help of the obtained scales, the research model was tested and the relationships between the variables in the model were examined for the first time. Within the scope of the study, data were collected from 579 participants who took part in R&D and innovation processes in industrial enterprises in Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa, Kocaeli, Sakarya, Düzce, Bolu and Yalova. The collected data were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation method. The findings obtained as a result of the analysis reveal that open innovation directly increases the grit and thiriving at work perceptions of the employees involved in the R&D and innovation process, as well as the innovation performance of the company. Findings show that, in addition to these effects, employee grit and thiriving at work perceptions also have a direct and significant positive effect on innovation performance. In addition, employee grit has a direct and significant positive impact on thiriving at work. In addition to direct effects, open innovation has a positive effect on both employee grit and thiriving at work, and indirectly affects innovation performance. Likewise, employee grit positively affects the thiriving at work, contributing indirectly to innovation performance as well as directly. Within the scope of the study, it was also observed that the relationships determined between variables differ in various ways in terms of some variables such as education level, age, firm size and R&D department.