Internal innovative capability and sustainable competitive advantage in the South African automobile manufacturing industry

The automobile manufacturing industry in South Africa is dominated by multinational original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that restrict their ability to be innovative in product design and development. Given, the global nature of the industry, the local manufacturers need to stay competitive to be sustainable. The solutions that focus on efficiency and external challenges have not been adequate to assist the industry to stay competitive. Hence, this study is investigating the influence of internal innovative capability on sustainable competitive advantage in the South African vehicle manufacturing industry. This study has followed an exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory research methods to identify 11 dimensions of innovative capability and 5 dimensions of sustainable competitive advantage. The secondary data analysis has shown that process innovation activities were important in the industry while exploratory factor analysis (EFA) showed that these dimensions are important sources of variation in innovative capability and sustainable competitive advantage. Pearson correlation analysis showed that innovative capability is relatively associated with 3 dependent variables, instead of 5. Regression analysis showed that the majority of estimated coefficients of the independent variables were insignificant, but the F-statistics was significant for 3 out of 5 regression equations and 4 models had an R-squared approximately greater than 50%. Lastly, the qualitative results revealed four themes that relate to the two main concepts of the study. The results have shown that there are five factors that play a role in the development of innovative capabilities. The implementation of innovative capabilities requires five distinct approaches. On the other hand, the creation of sustainable competitive advantage (i.e., value) through resources is based four factors and lastly, the maintenance of the unique value proposition is possible through five distinct measures.