Sustainable Academic Innovativeness: Towards the Understanding of a New Construct and the Development of Scale

Abstract

This research will provide a literature review related to sustainable academic innovativeness as a new construct and define its dimensions of measures. In other words, based on the material collected for the literature review, we will identify the origin of this concept, its definition, and determinants. The main point argued here is that sustainable academic innovativeness emerges towards the superposition of two main concepts: sustainable innovativeness and academic innovativeness. A tryptic approach in the scale related to sustainable academic innovativeness was developed, with psychological dimensions, organizational dimensions, and behavioral dimensions used to appreciate the level of SAI. To confirm our theorical findings, we adopted a qualitative approach based on interview. Fifteen interviews with academics were conducted and analyzed according to content analysis and frequencies of specific keywords. The results show that SAI is associated in the first place with psychological dimensions. The general conclusion drawn is that SAI can be associated with the process of generation of a new academic service which depends on psychological dimensions and needs behavioral dimensions to be operationalized in a specific organizational dimension. At the end of this paper, a new measurement model and dimensions are set which can support a new future directive for research in this field.