How strategic leadership can impact sustainable innovation? Exploring the mediating effect of risk mitigation and resource orchestration

Purpose Strategic leadership drives sustainable innovation through managerial attention. However, extant literature on the attention-based view fails to incorporate the dynamics of managing attention during innovation risk mitigation and resource orchestration. This study overcomes this literature gap and managerial problem by exploring their parallel mediation effects on the relationship between strategic leadership and sustainable innovation using path analysis and structural equation modelling. Design/methodology/approach Multi-study research design was developed to investigate the mediating impact of risk mitigation and resource orchestration on the relationship between strategic leadership and sustainable innovation performance of entrepreneurial research and development (R&D) teams operating in government-funded academic organizations in India. Data collected through well-established surveys with independent samples (N1 = 120), (N2 = 360) and (N3 = 324) were analyzed to identify the direct and indirect effects through confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis. Findings This study finds that strategic leadership positively and significantly influences the sustainable innovation performance of entrepreneurial R&D teams. While doing so, it unravels the partial mediating effects of risk mitigation and resource orchestration capabilities, which help entrepreneurial R&D teams in improving their sustainable innovation performance. Originality/value Exploration of the direct impact of strategic leadership on sustainable innovation performance and empirical measurement of their direct and indirect effect through mediators like risk mitigation and resource orchestration extends the attention-based view of the firm. Leaders can leverage these mediating constructs by incorporating them in their innovation strategy to improve their sustainable innovation performance.