Financing Innovation in Human-Centric Organizations: Perceived Organizational Financial Support, Organizational Climate, and Innovative Work Behavior in the Industry 5.0 Service Economy

The transition toward a digital, circular, and human-centric (Industry 5.0) economy is as much a financial and economic transformation as a technological one. Firms that build the innovation capacity to redesign how they create and capture value depend on managers and investors who allocate scarce capital under uncertainty. Yet, whether the financial support that employees perceive actually accompanies innovative behavior, or whether the human and organizational conditions surrounding it matter more, remains underexamined at the firm level, particularly in service industries. This study examines how employees’ perceptions of their organization’s financial capability and willingness to support innovation relate to innovative work behavior (IWB) and how those perceptions operate alongside perceived organizational climate (OC), using the sports economy—a large and innovation-dependent service sector—as a test case. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted among 181 coaches employed in for-profit sports organizations in Lithuania. Data were analyzed using correlation and hierarchical multiple regression with demographic controls, a test of the climate–finance interaction, and diagnostic checks for common-method bias and multicollinearity. OC was positively associated with both IWB and perceived financial support for innovation. Perceived financial capability and willingness correlated with IWB at the bivariate level but added no significant variance once OC and the controls entered the model (ΔR2 = 0.013, p = 0.230). The climate–finance interaction was likewise non-significant. OC remained the strongest correlate, accounting on its own for approximately 24% of the variance in IWB and for an additional 19 percentage points beyond the demographic controls. Because all measures were self-reported at a single point in time, these results are interpreted as associations rather than causal effects, and the pattern is consistent with—though does not establish—an interpretation in which perceived financial support accompanies innovative behavior only where the organizational climate already supports it. The study contributes to research on innovative work behavior, human resource management, and the human-centric premise of Industry 5.0, suggesting to managers and funders that innovation budgets are unlikely to translate into innovative behavior unless paired with motivation, learning opportunities, leadership support, and psychological safety.