1. Introduction
Although it involves risks and its success is not guaranteed,
innovation is considered a requirement for adapting to a changing
environment. Due to strong competition,numerous technological advancements and changes in consumers'
tastes, firms' survival depends on their capacity to develop or adopt
innovations. For years, studies on innovation have focused on its
technological aspects. However, the field of innovation deals with
other aspects, such as business model innovation, service innovation
or management innovation. Management innovation is a relatively
recent term, although the concept has been discussed previously
using similar terms such as organizational or administrative innovation.
Innovation in management principles and processes has received
growing academic interest, and in recent years studies have analysed
it together with technological innovation and independently. The article by Birkinshaw,
Hamel, and Mol (2008) provided an interesting discussion on
management innovation, which led to other papers on this topic that will probably
provide the basis for many future research opportunities.
Management innovation explains an important part of a company's
innovative performance. It can create sustainable competitive
advantages that lead to economic success, and it can redefine an industry
through the propagation of new ideas. These
innovations in management practices and processes are especially
relevant to services activities. However, because the study of management innovation
as a relevant variable has only emerged in recent years, little
is known about its determining factors, and studies in the hospitality sector are
especially scarce. Therefore, research studies should be carried out
to reach a better understanding of management innovation.
Birkinshaw et al. (2008) identify four perspectives on management
innovation: i) institutional, which is related to the socioeconomic
conditions in which management innovation takes place; ii)
fashion, which focuses on the interaction between those who
supply ideas and those who use them; iii) cultural, which refers to
the way an organization reacts to the introduction of new management
ideas and practices; and iv) rational, which focuses on
improvements in organizational effectiveness provided by management
innovation. The present study aims to contribute to the
emerging scholarly discourse by combining the rational and
fashion perspectives to analyse antecedents of management innovation
in hotel firms. Specifically, it analyses the role played by two
internal resources, human capital and integration capability, aswell
as the effect of managers' relations with external agents as promoters
of management innovation. Therefore, the study makes it
possible to advance the knowledge in the underdeveloped literature
on management innovation by empirically testing the role
played by internal and external factors to the organization. In order
to achieve these objectives, this paper is structured in the following
way. First, the article focuses on the concept of management
innovation by describing the existing literature in this field and
building a set of hypotheses around its antecedents. Next, an
empirical study is presented that was carried out with a sample of
109 companies operating hotel establishments throughout the
Spanish territory. Finally, the article discusses the study's results,
implications and limitations, as well as possible questions for future
research.