From CEO passion to exploratory and exploitative innovation: the moderating roles of market and technological turbulence

Purpose Innovation has been identified as a critical element to achieve firms' growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) passion on firm innovation, including exploratory and exploitative innovation and examine the moderating roles of market and technological turbulence. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts the methodology of survey and uses multisource and time-lagged data of 146 firms in China. Seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) is used to test the hypotheses of this study. Findings This study finds that CEO passion promotes exploratory and exploitative innovation. Results also indicate that market turbulence strengthens the effect of CEO passion on exploratory and exploitative innovation, whereas technological turbulence weakens such an effect. Originality/value CEO passion is an important, positive affect which inspires CEOs to work for firms, but it has not yet received enough attention in the innovation literature. This study contributes to examining the impact of CEO passion on firm innovation and contributes to the contingency under which CEO passion influences firm innovation. Furthermore, this research finds that the moderating effects of market and technological turbulence are different in the relationship between CEO passion and firm innovation.