The relationship between innovation and sustainability: A meta-analytic study

The objective of this study is to analyze the effects of innovation on the performance of organizational sustainability, as well as on the environmental, economic and social dimensions. The search was done using various data collection sources, such as Scopus, WoS, Science Direct, Emerald, Sage, Wiley Online Library and Proquest. The research findings indicate that innovation positively impacts sustainability performance. The strongest and most favorable correlations occurred between economic innovation and sustainability performance and between environmental innovation and sustainability performance. Thus, the main contributions of the study are associated with: a) the existence of a positive and strong relationship between innovation and sustainability performance; b) evidence of innovation effect size on sustainability performance (combined effect size coefficient at r = 0.529 (p-value <0.000)); c) an identification of the gaps in the scientific literature evaluating the effect of innovation on the sustainability of organizations; and d) the fail-safe Rosenthal value is 37,800, which indicates that the number of unpublished documents required to make the observed effect size insignificant is too large. Future studies can advance with meta analyzes that adopt moderating and mediating constructions to assess the relationship between innovation and performance in sustainability. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.