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Introduction
Innovation plays a key role in achieving competitive advantage and organizational success (Jyoti and Kour, 2015). Innovative work behavior can be defined as the process of initiating, developing, realizing and implementing a novel idea (Coetzer et al., 2018) that may improve the functioning of a product, service, process and work method (Yuan and Woodman, 2010). It is not as easy as it sounds to generate practical, proactive and realistic ideas. This process becomes even more complicated when it faces uncertainty, risk and resistance from organizational members (De Jong and Den Hartog, 2010). Prior studies suggest that organizational innovation can only flourish when individuals engage in innovative work behavior (Ramamoorthy et al., 2005). In this globalization era, organizations work with a diverse workforce comprising of individuals from different nations, cultures, backgrounds and religions.
Due to divergent thinking and many unique inputs, a diverse workforce promotes multiple ideas (Ng et al., 2012). In a multinational corporation, employees work in a culturally diverse environment where it becomes important for employees to interact with and build interconnections with people who are different from them. Employees must have individual competencies to participate in innovative activities. Although innovative work behavior requires a number of individual competencies, understanding cultural differences and possessing requisite cultural intelligence (CQ) is vital. Employees with high CQ address diverse organizational cultures and are able to interact effectively with others, whereas those with low CQ result in knowledge hiding and conflicts (Bogilovic et al., 2017), making innovation difficult.
As the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, the health-care sector requires new perspectives and methods for dealing with a dynamic and turbulent developing environment. Developing countries like India are investing a major portion of their budget in the health-care sector to promote innovation as a source of competitive advantage. The health-care sector is one of the fastest-growing sectors in India. The health-care industry is currently undergoing tremendous changes throughout the world. It will be recorded that in 2020, the world was united against a common enemy, Covid-19, which disrupted people’s lives in all aspects. This heinous situation compels health-care workers to devise novel ways to protect themselves, especially because knowledge innovation strategies are also sources of competitive advantage for health-care institutions (Penco et al.