No abstract

The term innovation orientation has been frequently used in the innovation literature, but with a mix of conceptualizations and meanings. Drawing from work found in the innovation, management, and marketing literatures over the past 35 years, the concept of innovation orientation as a system is conceptualized and defined in this article. The domain of innovation orientation is delineated as a multidimensional knowledge structure and a framework for understanding innovation orientation and its consequences in an organizational context are developed. The framework defines the innovation orientation knowledge structure as composed of a learning philosophy, strategic direction, and transfunctional beliefs within an organization that define and direct the organizational strategies and actions toward specific innovation-enabling competencies and processes. These innovation-oriented firm competencies are in the areas of resource allocation, technology, employees, operations, and markets. The framework then explains that these appropriately developed innovation-enabling competencies lead to innovation outcomes, specifically ideal innovation form, type, and rate that, in turn, affect firm performance. An inventory of propositions for future research that correspond to the innovation orientation concept is also presented in this comprehensive framework. This study provides two important contributions to the existing innovation literature. First, the article examines the vast innovation literature to arrive at a clear definition of the innovation orientation construct to provide a consistent conceptualization for future research. Second, the article develops a comprehensive, organized framework for understanding innovation orientation and its effects. In doing this, the framework extends the dynamic capabilities research stream by offering an explanation of how innovation orientation fosters the development of organizational competencies and makes it possible for a firm to recognize and respond to shifts in market dynamism.

Most prior innovation research has focused on factors that affect innovations, primarily rate, speed and benefits. More recent research has examined innovation as a system-based, firm-wide orientation toward innovation. Along with this broader perspective comes a need for understanding outcomes of the orientation, both positive and negative. This paper uses grounded theory methodology to develop such a framework of outcomes of an innovation orientation based on interviews with executive experts. The study results provide guidance to practitioners considering a firm-wide innovation orientation and avenues for further study for academics.

A number of researchers have reported the positive benefits of creating and maintaining a market orientation. This study is one of the first to explicitly investigate the effects of market orientation within a channel context. It is proposed that a supplier’s perceptions of a reseller’s market orientation will positively affect the supplier’s perceptions of certain key relationship marketing constructs. Data collected from 380 suppliers were used to test the hypotheses. All hypotheses were supported.

Although a large number of studies both in and out of the tourism literature have examined perceived risk, the risk categories utilized are often too broad and are not generated from the perspective of current and potential travellers. This defi ciency in the travel research is addressed in this study by asking more than 2,000 respondents to identify their concerns when travelling. All respondent concerns were content analyzed to derive ten travel-specifi c risks and the relationship of the identifi ed risks with demographic characteristics of the respondents was examined. The identifi cation of these potential and actual traveller-driven travel-risks allows tourism offi cials to better understand how to respond to alleviate traveller concerns and encourage travel.