The role of innovation in building competitive advantages: an empirical investigation

Abstract

Purpose Nowadays, innovation appears as one of the main driving forces of organisational success. Despite the above fact, its impact on the propensity of an organisation to develop and sustain a competitive advantage has not yet received sufficient empirical investigation. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the existing empirical literature by focusing on the antecedents of innovation and its impact on competitive advantage. It proposes a newly developed conceptual framework that adopts a three-step approach, highlighting areas that have rarely been simultaneously examined before. Design/methodology/approach The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was performed with the use of a newly developed structured questionnaire that was distributed to a group of Greek manufacturing companies. The questionnaire has been successfully completed by chief executive officers (CEOs) from 189 different companies. CEOs were used as key respondents due to their knowledge and experience. The reliability and the validity of the questionnaire were thoroughly examined. Empirical data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique. The study is empirical (based on primary data), explanatory (examines cause and effect relationships), deductive (tests research hypotheses) and quantitative (includes the analysis of quantitative data collected with the use of a structured questionnaire). Findings Results indicate that knowledge management, intellectual capital, organisational capabilities and organisational culture have significant direct and indirect effects on innovation, underlining the importance of their simultaneous enhancement. Finally, the positive effect of innovation on the creation of competitive advantages is empirically validated, bridging the gap in the relevant literature and offering avenues for additional future research. Originality/value The causal relationship between innovation and competitive advantage, despite its significant theoretical support, has not been empirically validated. The present paper aspires to bridge this gap, investigating the impact of innovation on the development of competitive advantages. Moreover, the present study adopts a multidimensional approach that has never been explored in the existing innovation literature, making the examination of the proposed conceptual framework an interesting research topic.

Innovative Behaviors, Employee Creativity, and Sustainable Competitive Advantage: A Moderated Mediation

“…Furthermore, Chatzoglou and Chatzoudes [59] supported that [process and product] innovation has a positive impact on organizational CA. While the study focused on manufacturing firms, Liu [60] uncovered an indirect effect of employee IB on competitive advantage via human capital with a sample of various levels of department managers in China-based hotels.…”

“…Furthermore, our findings support the widely accepted ideas, but scanty empirical evidence of the effect of organizational innovation on CA. For instance, Chatzoglou and Chatzoudes [59] found that a higher level of innovation in terms of new products/services or business processes leads to a better CA performance. We found that IB positively relates to CA.…”

Intellectual capital, organisational climate, innovation culture, and SME performance

“…From this perspective, the study argues that the recognition of IC, OC, and innovation culture jointly contribute to an enterprise's competitiveness and economic performance. Most of authors tend to focus on a single issue, either IC, OC (Gläser et al, 2017), either only some offer dual associations IC and performance, OC, and innovation culture (Schneider et al, 2017;Chatzoglou and Chatzoudes, 2018;Dávila et al, 2018) or trial associations organisational culture, performance and innovation culture (Shanker et al, 2017;Kraśnicka et al, 2018), Our study, therefore, provides the results of the relationship between the components of IC and OC, and the influence of these factors on innovativeness (IN) and BP in the new EU member state of the Republic of Croatia. Croatia is used as an example of a post-transition country with an established (but still weak) sector of innovative SMEs.…”

Public Procurement of Innovation: Selection of the Sustainable Alternative

“…International competitive advantage (Cooper, 1987); National competitive advantage (Chatzoglou, 2018) Effectiveness Customer satisfaction, improving service (Abou-Zeid, 2004)…”