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Innovation and corporate entrepreneurship in service businesses

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Abstract

The strategic entrepreneurship field has established the importance of a generalized entrepreneurial behaviour across the organization. However, extant research has failed to establish how the association with innovation is different in service businesses. This is a relevant gap in the literature addressed by the paper, given the role of services in the world economy and the importance of employee–client interactions for the competitiveness of most service businesses. An empirical analysis from 127 service and non-service firms, using hierarchical multiple regression, confirms there are relevant differences, with important theoretical and managerial takeaways.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the Portuguese Science Foundation—FCT and FEDER/COMPETE (grant PEst-C/EGE/UI4007/2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies, Av. Condes de Barcelona, 2769-510, Estoril, Portugal

    Maria de Lurdes Calisto

  2. Centre for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics, University of Évora, Largo dos Colegiais 2, 7004-516, Évora, Portugal

    Maria de Lurdes Calisto & Soumodip Sarkar

  3. Department of Management, University of Évora, Évora, Portugal

    Soumodip Sarkar

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  1. Maria de Lurdes Calisto
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  2. Soumodip Sarkar
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Correspondence to Maria de Lurdes Calisto.

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Calisto, M.L., Sarkar, S. Innovation and corporate entrepreneurship in service businesses. Serv Bus 11, 581–600 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-016-0321-6

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