Cybersecurity resilience and innovation ecosystems for sustainable business excellence: Examining the dramatic changes in the macroeconomic business environment

Data and information systems are valuable, rare, and often inimitable resources for any organization willing to innovate its products, processes, and business models, with the ultimate goal of gaining a competitive edge in a digital world. Data and information systems are also valuable and rare resources when organizations interact with each other within their ecosystems as data flows are deployed conjointly by organizations to achieve innovation and performance outcomes for their ecosystem. As such data and information systems within organizations, interorganizational relationships and ecosystems need to be protected. For this reason, organizations are required to strengthen their cybersecurity systems. This seems a necessary precondition to assist organizations and ecosystems to innovate their products, processes, and business models especially during times of dramatic changes (such as wars or pandemics) that can pose threats to organizational and ecosystem data protection. Accordingly, cybersecurity resilience allows to address those threats triggered by dramatic changes. In this light, this study aims to investigate how components of cybersecurity resilience can influence organizations’ innovation capabilities and ultimately sustainable business excellence as well as the moderating influences of macroeconomic policies and regulations. By building on a cross-sectional research design we found that cybersecurity resilience positively influences innovation capabilities that in their turn positively influence sustainable business excellence. We also find that macroeconomic policies and regulations moderate the relationship between government efficacy and sustainable business excellence.