Sustainability orientation, industrial big data and product innovation: Evidence from the European manufacturing sector

Abstract

Sustainability is one of the greatest challenges for industry today. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of sustainability orientation on product innovation in the European manufacturing sector, with a particular focus on the direct and mediating effect of industrial big data use, something that has been largely neglected so far. The data used for the purpose of the present study were collected from the European Manufacturing Survey (EMS) 2018 edition, consisting of 1,123 surveys administered in Austria, Spain, Croatia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia. Binary logistic regressions and Hayes mediation models are used to test the hypotheses. Results suggest that sustainability orientation practices and industrial big data use positively influence product innovation, and that industrial big data use mediates the relation between sustainability orientation and product innovation. The findings have implications for both theory and practice