Innovation management involvement among persons with disabilities in Malaysia

Background: As Malaysia struggles with the battle to retain talented workers, the retention of persons with disabilities (PWDs) remains a major challenge in innovation management. Malaysia currently has the lowest retention of PWDs in innovation management in The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The purpose of this study is to develop a unique framework to enhance the inclusion of PWDs in Malaysia. Methods: A questionnaire was distributed to 200 PWDs in the central region of Malaysia. Results: Based on the results of this research, four crucial variables (salary, compensation, career advancement and reward management) contributed to the lack of involvement in innovation management among PWDs in Malaysia. Conclusions: This study focuses on 200 PWDs in Malaysia. Despite the fact that PWDs’ involvement in innovation management is the lowest, there is a lack of research initiative and practitioner commitment to address this issue. Serving as preliminary research in Malaysia, this study develops a unique framework to fill the gap.


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Introduction
As Malaysia struggles with the battle for talented employees following the COVID-19 pandemic, retaining skilled persons with disabilities (PWDs) remains a major challenge. PWD refers to those who have an impairment of the body. hearing or speech that makes it more difficult to perform certain activities alone (activity limitation) and interact with people around them (participation restrictions). Innovation management involvement refers to the participation of PWDs in contributing or managing ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in existing goods or services. It is challenging to retain PWDs working in the field of innovation management because PWDs have a high tendency to leave the workforce due to physical conditions and the facilitating conditions of the working environment. Malaysia's PWDs retention in the field of innovation management remains low at 12.6 percent in 2020 (Ta, Wah & Leng, 2021). In the global competitive world, PWDs have high potential to be excellent product and service innovators and help organizations lead with core competencies if they are given equal employment opportunities as normal workers. As Boehm et al. (2020) argues, PWDs are more capable of producing and generating innovative ideas compared to workers without disabilities as PWDs are always more aware of changes in the work environment.
According to Brown (2018), 82% of PWDs do not often participate in innovation management for a period of more than two years. This is a significant barrier to organizations, which hinders the business' ability to maintain a healthy product innovation life cycle. Organizations will definitely take longer time to innovate a new product when PWDs are not empowered and less motivated to contribute their ideas towards the innovation (Koay & Muthuveloo, 2021;Yuen & Ng, 2021). Employers do not sufficient knowledge or competency to identify and utilize the innovation capability of PWDs in order to reduce PWDs' turnover. High rates of PWDs' turnover cause high cost in innovation management for the organizations (Nautiyal, 2021). The absence of an innovation ecosystem that brings together the management, PWDs, colleagues and customers to drive innovation forward causes organizations to face great difficulties in commercializing the innovation in the market (Kilpatrick et al., 2017;Ta, Wah & Leng, 2021).
Employers do not have sufficient knowledge or the competence to identify and utilize the innovation capability of PWDs in order to enhance PWDs' job satisfaction and reduce their turnover. High rates of PWDs' turnover cause high cost in innovation management for the company. The company will face great difficulties in achieving the business innovation goal and commercializing the innovation in the market.
The involvement of PWDs in innovation management in Malaysia has not yet reached the 40% global standard, which is far behind other countries in Asia (Meeks et al., 2019). Organizations are not ready to involve PWDs in innovation as employers usually have a tendency to think that PWDs have lower creativity, high absenteeism, lack of new ideas and require greater supervision compared to those without disabilities (Boehm et al., 2020;Nautiyal, 2021;Ta et al., 2021). Organizations in Malaysia face challenges in increasing PWDs' involvement in innovation management because they have limited resources in providing sufficient career advancement opportunities, attractive salary, safe working environment, reasonable compensation and rewards (Ibrahim, Abraham & Mohd, 2021;Koay & Muthuveloo, 2021;Yuen & Ng, 2021). It is also difficult for organizations to attract more PWDs due to the high costs, high uncertainties and high risks of innovation failure (Ibrahim, Abraham & Mohd, 2021). Organizations fail to create a conducive environment to encourage more PWDs to involve in innovation management (Koay & Muthuveloo, 2021).

Knowledge gaps and theoretical implication
Despite the fact that PWDs' involvement in innovation management in Malaysia is among the lowest in Asia, there is a lack of research initiative and practitioner commitment to address this issue. Serving as preliminary research, this study develops a comprehensive framework to fill the gap. The main purpose of this research is to examine PWD's innovation management involvement by taking into consideration factors such as risk-taking, reward, salary, career advancement and compensation. Most of the previous studies on disability employment in India (Nautiyal, 2021), Australia (Kilpatrick et al., 2017) and Africa (Vincent & Chiwandire, 2019). Little attention was given to enhance innovation management involvement of PWDs worldwide.
This study adds knowledge to the Business Model Innovation Typology (BMIT) theory, which measured innovation management involvement on only 3 factors: technology, value network, and financial hurdle rate (Clauss et al., 2022). According to BMIT theory, employees will involve in innovation management if they are given more opportunity to integrate business with technology (Clauss et al., 2022) and form value network to work with customers and suppliers to bring the minimum rate of return to the organization (Clauss et al., 2022). The BMIT theory is apparently insufficient to measure PWDs' involvement in innovation management as it is unable to address the major challenges faced by organizations in Malaysia, which are limited career advancement opportunities, low salary, poor working environment and poor reward (Ibrahim, Abraham & Mohd, 2021;Koay & Muthuveloo, 2021;Suresh & Dyaram, 2020;Ta et al., 2021;Yuen & Ng, 2021). In order to fill this gap, this study is conducted as one of the pioneer studies in Malaysia that proposes a holistic model to examine the innovation management involvement among PWDs from the perspective of risk-taking, reward, salary, career advancement and compensation.

Literature review
Innovation management involvement refers to PWDs' willingness to engage in product innovation and service innovation activities (Park & Park, 2019). Innovation management involvement could be measured by the amount of related stress, and hours spent in innovation (Kilpatrick et al., 2017). The higher an employee's job satisfaction, the longer the hours spent in innovation.Based on the most recent literature (Brown, 2019;McKenzie, 2021;Nautiyal, 2021;Suresh & Dyaram, 2020;Ta et al., 2021), the following variables was identified to have an impact on the innovation management involvement of PWDs.

Risk-taking
Risk-taking is one of the key determinants of PWDs involvement in innovation management. It examines whether PWDs are willing to take bold actions into new product and service innovation by investing their efforts with uncertain outcomes (Suresh & Dyaram, 2020). Risk-taking behaviours shape and motivate the potential of PWDs to improve capability to participate in and achieve greater satisfaction through innovation management (McKenzie, 2021).

Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is another factor that can determine innovation management involvement. Employees can consider their level of job satisfaction to determine whether they like or dislike their product and service innovation jobs (Brown, 2019). The lower job satisfaction of PWDs can reflect their negative innovation interest and lack of involvement in contributing new ideas to the organization (Boehm et al., 2020). Job satisfaction could be measured by the amount of related stress, and hours spent in innovation (Kilpatrick et al., 2017). The higher an employee's job satisfaction, the longer the hours spent in innovation.

Reward
Reward refers to how an organization manages equitable monetary and non-monetary incentives in order to encourage PWDs to contribute their original ideas for improving the existing product and service (McKenzie, 2021). It includes analyzing and managing PWDs' welfare through structured procedures based on their innovation outcomes (Baser et al., 2017). Sufficient reward makes PWDs feel their ideas are appreciated within the company (Meeks et al., 2019).
Organizations can express their gratitude through rewards such as gifts, company trips or offering extra leave.

Salary
Salary is another factor that encourages PWDs to work hard in innovation and to accelerate self-worth in the company. Salary is determined by comparing market and area pay rates for people performing the same work in the same industries. Higher salary range should be paid by an employer should the PWDs contribute more ideas towards improving existing products and services (Malcolm Pace Debono, 2018).

Career advancement
Career advancement is another critical component in cultivating PWDs' innovation management involvement. It can be used to recognize the value and potential of the candidates (Meeks et al., 2019). Career advancement and growth depend on the willingness of PWDs to learn and develop new skills and techniques to enhance the existing product and service (Nautiyal, 2021). PWDs will be more likely to continue innovating products and services if they are given more chances for job promotion and training (Suresh & Dyaram, 2020).

Compensation
Compensation is another main motivation for PWDs to become innovative in their work (Park & Park, 2019). PWDs will feel more psychologically secure and contribute new ideas if the current job provides convincing protection to their life, creativity and knowledge (Ta et al., 2021). Compensation can be a useful and powerful tool that affects PWDs in an organization because company recognition and protection for occupation related loss, suffering, or injury will motivate employees to contribute more ideas to improve the current performance of the company (Meeks et al., 2019).

Methods
The following research framework was developed to determine the key determinant of innovation management among PWDs in Malaysia. Figure 1 shows the research model.

Study design
This study is a quantitative survey of involvement in innovation management among persons with disabilities in Malaysia. The data collection period was four months, from 1 January 2021 to 30 April 2021. The survey was conducted on a sample of 200 respondents in SMEs in big cities in Malaysia, such as Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor and Penang. These locations were selected as they are the fastest-growing big cities in the country, and have the highest number of PWD employees, which would allow the desired respondents to be reached.

Data collection
The survey was created by the researchers using a software called SurveyLab. A copy of the survey used can be found under Extended data (Yuen, 2021). The data collection involved conducting face-to-face recruitment, exposure and data collection with the respondents from 1 January 2021 to 30 April 2021. To ensure the respondents had adequate knowledge in innovation management, the targeted respondents for this study were observed from afar to ensure that they were involved in innovation management activities at their respective workplace in SMEs. Then, the researcher approached the respondents and invited them to participate in this study. Written consent was sought from participants prior to conducting the survey.
Since the target respondents are PWDs, the researchers accompanied each respondent to provide immediate assistance while they were completing the paper survey. Respondents were given 30 minutes to complete the survey. Responses were collected from the respondents immediately after they answered to ensure that a sufficient sample size could be arrived at. Within a four-month period (1 January 2021 to 30 April 2021), 200 valid responses were gathered and used for further analysis. A 5-point Likert scale 1-strongly disagree, 2-disagree, 3-neutral, 4-agree and 5-strongly agree was used in the survey to measure participants' responses to risk-taking, job satisfaction, reward management, salary, compensation, career advancement and innovation management involvement Pre-testing validation was conducted face-to-face to ensure that respondents fulfilled three pre-testing validation criteria before they were allowed to answer the survey. The three validation criteria were 1. Respondent must be a current PWD employee in a SME, 2. Respondent must have at least one year of working experience, 3. Respondents must have adequate knowledge and involvement in product innovation and service innovation activities. SMEs that hire PWD employees were identified from https://www.talentcorp.com.my, an official government website for talent management in Malaysia.
After the pre-testing validation, pilot testing was conducted. Pilot testing was conducted among 50 respondents in SMEs before the actual study to test the correctness of the survey instructions and ensure that all the respondents would be able to follow the directions as indicated. Preliminary pilot testing also provides better information on whether the survey is effective in fulfilling the purpose of the study. A grammatical correction was made after pilot testing to ensure the clarity of the survey instruction. Reliability testing for internal consistency reliability was then conducted. The Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient was computed. Survey items measuring risk-taking, job satisfaction, reward management, salary, compensation, career advancement and innovation management involvement have high Cronbach's Alpha coefficients ranged from.72 to.84, All survey items yielded satisfactory internal consistency.

Sampling
In this research, purposive sampling was used to recruit suitable survey respondents. Purposive sampling refers to selecting target respondents based on characteristics of a population and the objective of the study. Purposive sampling was used to select 200 PWD respondents from 10 SMEs in Malaysia. Researchers use the purposive sampling technique to collect data from PWD respondents who have shared characteristics of having at least one year of working experience and adequate knowledge in innovation management from big cities in Malaysia, such as Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor and Penang. Researchers achieve a lower margin of error by using the purposive sampling approach to collect survey data that comes straight from the source. Each respondent has identifiable characteristics that place them into the same group so that generalization of the results can be effectively carried out.

Analysis
This study used statistical software package, IBM SPSS Statistics version 23.0 to process and analyze the data, IBM SPSS Statistics Version 23.0 was employed for data screening for Common Method Variance (CMV) to eliminate bias caused by the variations in responses to the survey instrument. Data screening results indicated that this survey was free from the CMV bias threat. IBM SPSS Statistics Version 23.0 was also utilized to perform Multiple Linear Regression Analysis to test the effects of risk-taking, job satisfaction, reward management, salary, compensation, and career advancement on the innovation management involvement of PWDs. The R-square value of the Multiple Linear Regression Analysis is a statistical measure used to determine how close the data are to the fitted regression. The higher the R-squared, the better the model.

Ethics statement
Ethical approval was obtained for this project from the Research Ethics Committee (REC) Multimedia University (Ethical Approval Number: EA1312021). Written consent was obtained from participants for the use of and publication of their data. A written consent statement was printed on the survey. Respondents were required to tick the written consent form before they started the survey.

Descriptive statistics
Based on the descriptive statistics in Table 1, 200 respondents completed the survey. As shown in Table 1, male respondents represented 54.9% or 110 out of the total 200 respondents. While the number of female respondents represented 44.1% or 90 out of the total 200 respondents. Seventy-nine percent or 158 respondents had one-five years working experience and 21.0% of them had more than five years working experience. Sixty-three percent or 127 respondents are active in innovation management while 28.5% or 57 of them are very active in innovation management. The dataset for this study can be found in the Underlying data (Yuen, 2021). Multiple linear regression is more powerful than correlational analysis as it analyses the correlation and directionality of all tested factors before proposing a comprehensive model of innovation management involvement.
The R-square value of the Multiple Linear Regression Analysis is a statistical measure of how close the data are to the fitted regression. The higher the R-squared, the better the model. Based on the results of Multiple Linear Regression analysis in Table 2, the R-square value is at 0.645. This indicates that 64.5% of the innovation management involvement is explained by independent variables. It implies that the four significant independent variables (salary, compensation, career advancement and reward management) contribute approximately 64.5% toward the dependent variable (innovation management among PWDs in Malaysia) at the significance of <0.005 level. Career advancement is the most important factor affecting innovation management (Beta coefficient = 0.308), followed by reward (Beta coefficient = 0.188), salary (Beta coefficient = 0.150) and compensation (Beta coefficient = 0.139),

Discussion
Out of 200 PWDs surveyed in this study, 178 claimed that they are no longer interested in innovation management and might leave the organization within two years.
Career advancement is the most important factor affecting PWDs' innovation management involvement in their organization. This is because career advancement is part of lifelong learning that can create an opportunity for the PWDs to innovate products and services. As the pioneer study that measures PWDs' innovation management involvement, this study adds knowledge to Ibrahim, Abraham & Mohd (2021)'s previous finding by highlighting that career advancement not only can ensure that PWDs have related qualifications, experience to complete their employment tasks but also unleash PWDs' potential knowledge and skills in order to fulfil the product and service innovation requirements.
Salary is a crucial financial incentive to enhance innovation involvement among PWDs. If the company consistently provides a reasonable salary for their PWDs, PWDs will be more motivated to engage in innovation management. As highlighted by Malcolm Pace Debono (2018), organizations have to update their salary for knowledge workers to make sure that it is on par with counterparts to retain the most talented workers. In order to attract PWDs to serve longer in innovation management, this study reveals that salary is an important factor and the salary of PWDs who involve in innovation management need to be regularly revised.
Moreover, reward is also significant in PWD retention. Appropriate rewards and recognition from company supervisors encourage workers to intensify their effort towards performing better at workplace (Baser et al., 2017;Ibrahim, Abraham & Mohd, 2021). This study contributes to the existing knowledge rewards such as gifts, company trips and extra leave motivates PWDs to innovate more product and service.
Compensation is another main motivator for PWDs to enhance their innovation involvement. Adequate medical pay, medical facilities, transportation services, additional leave and pension welfare are critical to make employees feel valued by the organization (Ta et al., 2021). As one of the pioneer studies that link compensation to PWDs' innovation management involvement, this study contributes to existing knowledge by disclosing that adequate compensation is an effective measure to attract PWDs to contribute participate. Risk-taking is not a crucial motivator for PWDs. This is an important new finding that will contribute to the existing knowledge of disability management. Risk management is not a crucial factor for PWDs possibly because in SMEs, product and service innovation risks are borne by the owners or senior managers but not the employees.

Practical implications
Career advancement is the most important factor affecting PWDs' innovation management involvement in the organization. As the career growth and career advancement opportunities are limited, this finding is crucial in urging SMEs to pursue for a paradigm shift to create equal career advancement opportunity for PWDs towards the innovation development of the organizations. In order to encourage more PWDs to actively involved in innovation management, PWDs who experience career plateaus for remaining in the same position for a long time should be promoted. More opportunity should be given to PWDs to prove that they are able to do well in senior positions. Equal training opportunities should be provided for PWDs to accelerate their contributions towards organizational innovation.
Salary is a crucial financial incentive to enhance innovation involvement among PWDs. As Persons with Disabilities Act 2008 prohibited discrimination against PWDs on pay increase, wages and bonus, this finding is important in urging government to ensure the successful implementation of the wage subsidy scheme for PWDs in innovation management sector that SMEs will receive wage subsidies of 30% of the monthly salary on condition that the monthly salary is RM1500 and above.
This study serves as an important booster for SMEs in Malaysia to provide equal rewards to PWDs who innovate products and services to meet customers' needs. Rewards will make PWDs to stay longer in SMEs as rewards make them realizes how meaningful an innovation task is. Rewards serve as positive recognition from SMEs will keep PWDs actively engaged in innovation management.
Compensation is another main motivator for PWDs to enhance their innovation management involvement. This finding is crucial in ensuring adequate medical pay, medical facilities, transportation services, additional leave and pension welfare in SMEs as this study is one of the pioneer studies that relates compensation with innovation management involvement.

Conclusion
This study focuses on 200 PWDs in Malaysia. Despite the fact that PWDs' involvement in innovation management in Malaysia is among the lowest in Asia, there is a lack of research initiative and practitioner commitment to address this issue. Serving as preliminary research, this study develops a comprehensive framework to fill the gap. Serving as pioneer research that measures PWDs' involvement in innovation management, this study develops a comprehensive framework to fill the knowledge gap. SMEs can use the findings of this research as a reference to improve company weaknesses and encourage more PWDs to get involved in innovation management in the next decade. Further research could use larger sample size, which to test the longitudinal effect of innovation management of PWDs over the long run.

Data availability
Underlying data DANS EASY: Innovation management among persons with disability in Malaysia https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-x4t-vnz5 (Yuen, 2021) This project contains the following underlying data: • F1000Datasets+Codebook.xlsx (Survey data.) Extended data DANS EASY: Innovation management among persons with disability in Malaysia https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-x4t-vnz5 (Yuen, 2021) This project contains the following extended data: • Questionnaire on Innovation Management among Persons with Disability in Malaysia.pdf Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).

Open Peer Review
Reviewer Expertise: My area of research is organisational behaviour, educational management, tourism management and SME studies.

Methods
As with other survey-based studies, the authors may wish to explain on the sampling adequacy.
https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.77929.r138663 © 2022 Choong Y. This is an open access peer review report distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Yuen-Onn Choong
Faculty of Business and Finance, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kampar, Malaysia The authors should relate the issue to innovation management. The issue is focused on turnover intention or retention of PWCs. However, the explanation of the linkage between the issue and innovation management is weak and limited in the current form. Are there any similar past studies which can be included and explained so the authors could show how these relevant studies differ as compared to your study?
For the methodology : What sampling technique was used in this study and why? Next question is how do you ensure the generalizability and representativeness of the sample toward the targeted population? It is well understood that there are three selection criteria. However, how do the author assess respondent innovation management?
Are there any theoretical implication for this study?
The work should have managerial implications. I would suggest author to provide implications based on the current usual practices and policies. What effective interventions can be offered to all these stakeholders?
There should be a standalone section for conclusions. I would like the authors to talk about the key findings and what key implications can be recapped in the conclusion.

If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate? Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility? Yes Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

No
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: My area of research is organisational behaviour, educational management, tourism management and SME studies.
I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.
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