| dc.description.abstract | The general purpose of the study was to find out how various dimensions of an
innovation strategy affect sustainable competitive advantage in the Gold mining industry
within a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) Zimbabwean
environment. The specific objective of this study was aimed at determining how
innovative design solutions, advanced technology utilisation, rewarding for innovation
and innovative business re-organisation affected sustainable competitive advantage.
An explanatory research was adopted because the study was aimed at collecting
information from respondents on their perceptions to sustainable competitive advantage
in the various mines operating with the gold sector. The target population for this study
was the gold mines registered with the Chamber of Mines in Zimbabwe. Out of the total
of 150 questionnaires awarded only 120 were filled and returned giving a response rate of
77%. Further, a correlation approach was adopted as the study was seeking to describe
relationship between sustainable competitive advantage and the independent variables
(innovative design solutions, advanced technology utilisation, rewarding for innovation
and innovative business re-organisation).
Generally, the regression model showed that innovative design solutions and rewarding
innovative employee ideas were significant predictors of the sustainability of the
competitive advantage of the mining companies. It can be noted that rewarding
innovative employee ideas factors makes the most contribution to the sustainability of
competitive advantage from all the four variables tested and this can be argued along the
lines of employees being the biggest assets the mines have thus no amount of technology
will function without buy-in from the employees to operate that machinery. The analysis
also showed that most if not all respondents believed that they were operating in volatile,
uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments hence the usual strategy taken was that
of survival as compared to growth.
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The study thereby established that effectiveness and extend of adopting a continuous
innovation strategy is key for the mining companies to gain sustained competitive
advantage of Mining firms and thus allow them to compete globally without just
confinement to the local factors. The study also highlighted that adoption of innovation as
a strategy does not only mean acquiring modernised equipment but also entails that
business need to streamline their activities, structure and capabilities along the notion of
attaining sustainability as well.
The study recommends that the successful implementation will require different skills
sets, new modes of collaboration and different teaming structures. These are all enterprise
model problems which need to be addressed. While the mining sector knows that
innovation is important and that it should be central to an organizations agenda, they
often fail to get the traction they desire due to lack of a systemic approach to
implementation of innovation.
It was therefore recommended that when an enterprise is pursuing the implementation of
strategies of sustainable innovation, the process should lie in the people of the
organization. Employee participation means employees participate in the process of
formulating and implementing the management decisions.
For scholars, the work leaves room for the proposition of similar quantitative studies in
different regions, provided that innovation data is exhaustive and adopts the same
standards across countries. In addition, the inclusion of small- or medium sized firms
could highlight the presence of differences of behaviour across size-classes, as posited by
previous works | en_ZW |
