Guest editorial

Citation

Yahiaoui, D., Chebbi, H. and Vrontis, D. (2020), "Guest editorial", Competitiveness Review, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1108/CR-01-2020-129

Over the past half-century, researchers have paid much attention to technological innovation. Therefore, the trend over the past 15 years has been toward exploring other forms of innovation (Birkinshaw et al., 2008). In fact, to achieve continuous improvement within organization, innovative methods were developed on different levels: total quality management (Pullman et al., 2002), Customer relationship management (Ngai, 2005), management practices and organization (Birkinshaw et al., 2008). Despite the increasing number of researches on the subject, the real challenge of how do companies create new methods and adapt them to the changing environment is still understudied.

The originality of this special issue “Managing Advanced innovation methods in diverse environment” is that it provides a comprehensive material about this challenge in different contexts and sectors: crisis situation, SME vs large corporation, stable vs turbulent environment and emerging vs developed markets (Govindarajan and Trimble, 2013).

This special issue aims to reinforce our current understanding on the different innovation methods in various environments. By defining and analyzing the challenges faced by companies, currently and in the future, this special issue sheds lights on the diversity of the innovative practices. Various contexts are studied: turbulent environment (economy, technology), stable/unstable environment, cross-countries comparison (developing/developing countries), changing environment and various business sectors.

The first paper, entitled “Social capital dimensions and employee creativity: Does cognitive style matter?” (Oussi R., Chtourou W.), aims to investigate the theoretical limitations of social network theory applied on employee creativity. Based on a sample of 95 employees belonging to four Tunisian companies in the IT sector, they show that the impact of “weak ties” of the structural dimension of social capital on individual creativity is more pronounced when employees present an “innovative” cognitive style. They consequently suggest that employee creativity is more important when “Originality” component of “Innovative” cognitive style is on its’ highest levels.

The second paper is entitled “Management approach for innovation success in unstable and stable environments: opportunity-based approach vs. administrative control approach” (Abidi D., Nakagawa K.). The authors choose Tunisia and Japan as a research site to explore the accuracy of management approaches adopted in stable and unstable environment. They provide a comprehensive comparison management driven innovation approach in both countries through a multi-group structural equation modelling. They confirm that OBA (Opportunity-Based Approach) improves product innovation success in an unstable environment, while the ACA (Administrative Control Approach) is more accurate for innovation in a stable one.

The third paper, “TQM for Greek SMEs: an alternative in facing crisis conditions?” (Sainis G., Harito G., Kriemadis T., Papasolomou I.), draws attention on whether the ISO certification is a stepping stone leading to instilling a TQM culture, or whether it is the end-point in their journey towards quality. Based on a triangulation approach, the authors test a number of hypotheses through the assessment of TQM implementation level in 400 Greek SMEs. They show that Greek ISO certified SMEs, emphasize performance appraisal, invest in quality elements that require minimum utilization of their resources and prioritize their ISO certification.

The next paper is focused on the impact of customer relationship management (CRM) adoption on organizational performance by analyzing the moderating role of technological turbulence (Ullah. A; Iqbal.S; Shams. S-M-R). The authors highlight the importance of innovation in terms of CRM adoption to enhance organizational performance. They collected and analyzed a primary data from 277 CRM staff-members of the banking sector in Pakistan. The results show the negative impact of technological turbulence on the association linking with CRM adoption, as well as organizational performance.

The fifth paper deals with technological innovation in the sports industry (Vrontis. D; Viassone. M; Serravalle.F; Christofi. M). It aims at investigating the effects of the digitalization process on the demand and supply side in the sports world through the advent of mobile apps and online services, such as Youtube. Based on a survey conducted with 150 consumers in north of Italy, the findings show that the digital channel takes leading role among young people. However, traditional sport is characterized by a weak penetration of innovative tools and is privileged by consumers under the age of 35.

To conclude, we hope you will find through this issue papers inspiring and interesting. We would like to thank the journal’s editorial team and staff. We do appreciate the time and efforts of all authors who contributed their valuable suggestions to all the papers submitted.