Innovation activities and the creation of new employment: An empirical assessment of South Korea’s manufacturing industry

The study proposes an integrated model to explore the effects of different innovation strategies on the creation of new employment. To verify the model, 532 manufacturing firms in South Korea were investigated. The results indicated that firms’ product innovation strategies had notable positive effects on firms’ creation of new employment, whereas firms’ process innovation strategies were negatively associated with the creation of new employment. Compared with the significant effects of the process innovation and product innovation processes, the activities of both user-centred innovation and organizational innovation were not significantly related to the creation of new employment. On the basis of the statistical results, both practical and academic implications are presented.