Optimizing innovation in pharma: how organizational agility unlocks quality performance through employee engagement

Pharmaceutical firms must balance innovation with rigorous quality standards. Drawing from Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, we examined how organizational agility unlocks the benefits of an innovation-supportive climate. Using a two-wave methodological design from 250 employees in the USA, moderated mediation analyses demonstrated that innovation climate exerted indirect effects on quality performance through engagement, but only when organizational agility was high. These findings suggest that innovation climates alone are insufficient. Instead, organizational agility functions as the crucial organizational-level resource that channels creative energy into employee engagement and quality outcomes, a dynamic particularly salient in pharmaceutical settings.