M. Muzamil Naqshbandi ⁎ , Ibrahim Tabche Dubai Business School, University of Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Open innovation Leadership Absorptive capacity Organizational learning culture India ABSTRACT Researchers have used several constructs to explain the success and failure of organizations' open innovation initiatives. Building upon the resource-based view of the firm, we develop a model to explain how leadership interacts with absorptive capacity and organizational learning culture to influence open innovation outcomes. The model is tested empirically using data sourced from managers working in diverse sectors in India. Results reveal that empowering leadership leads to enhanced open innovation outcomes through the intervention of organizational learning culture. Results, however, do not confirm a significant impact of the interaction of organizational culture and absorptive capacity on open innovation. A discussion of these findings along with implications for theory and practice is presented. 1. Introduction Open innovation continues to be a favorite research area in the strategic management domain (Elmquist et al., 2009). While open in- novation research has focused on identifying the factors that foster or impede open innovation (Naqshbandi et al., 2015), several aspects of open innovation management still remain under-studied (West and Bogers, 2017). Dahlander and Gann (2010) pointed out that as the emergence of open innovation models challenges firms to move past their traditional innovation paradigms, institutions would need to adopt more contemporary approaches to innovation management. Hence, shifting to modern modes of innovation invites firms to a cor- responding shift in their leadership models from traditional to the contemporary (Robbins and O'Gorman, 2015). Contingency leadership theory posits that the leadership style adopted is contingent on a firm's circumstances and set performance targets (Graeff, 1983; Sims et al., 2009). In this regard, the traditional leadership styles and their association with innovation has been the focus of several studies (Jung et al., 2003). Certain leadership styles, such as transactional leadership, directive leadership, and aversive leadership have been found to act as barriers to innovation (Avolio et al., 1999; Podsakoff et al., 2006; Sims et al., 2009). This is because these leadership styles are characterized by control, compliance, low flexibility and low innovation among employees (Sims et al., 2009), hence creating impetus for the identification of an appropriate leader- ship style that can foster open innovation success (Von Krogh and Von Hippel, 2003). As open innovation deals with the inflows (inbound open innova- tion) and the outflows (outbound open innovation) of knowledge that involve knowledge exploration and exploitation (Xia and Roper, 2016), it requires human capital that is capable of selecting, acquiring, trans- forming and utilizing knowledge for innovative purposes (Tirabeni et al., 2015). Hence, open innovation requires leaders who can effec- tively manage human capital (Lee and Cole, 2003; Lerner and Tirole, 2001). This is possible when leaders encourage followers to participate in knowledge-based activities (Whelan et al., 2011). Additionally, in order to promote open innovation, leaders are required to trust and encourage followers to participate in innovative activities (Fleming and Waguespack, 2005). A leadership style characterized by encouragement and trust in followers to participate in innovative activities is termed as empowering leadership (Arnold et al., 2000; Sims et al., 2009; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). West and Bogers (2017) contend that the open in- novation activity of an organization is interpreted, decided, and im- plemented by its employees. In this context, empowering leadership fosters creativity and flexibility among followers, resulting in “very high innovation” through followers' development and self-confidence (Sims et al., 2009). As empowerment is one of the crucial factors for achieving innovative outcomes (Sok and O'Cass, 2015), the first ob- jective of this study is to examine the role of empowering leadership in open innovation success. Existing studies support the view that em- powering leadership promotes innovation, however, an extant review of the literature indicates that not much is known about the role of leadership in promoting open innovation. This is particularly important since the role of leadership in open innovation is expected to differ from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.03.017 Received 13 June 2017; Received in revised form 12 February 2018; Accepted 20 March 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: mnaqshbandi@ud.ac.ae, virkul@gmail.com (M.M. Naqshbandi). The interplay of leadership, absorptive capacity, and organizational learning culture in open innovation: Testing a moderated mediation model Suggested citation: Naqshbandi, M M., Tabche, I. (2018) The interplay of leadership, absorptive capacity, and organizational learning culture in open innovation: Testing a moderated mediation model. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.03.017