engleski

Socially innovative SMEs in the Adriatic Region: analysis of innovation and business performance determinants

The objective of this study is to investigate innovation and business performance determinants of companies located in the Adriatic Region that introduced social innovation and compare them with determinants of companies that did not introduce social innovation or did not innovate at all, with a special focus on export as an indicator of firms’ international activities. This research is a part of a wider research on innovation in the Adriatic region conducted in frame of the EU-funded project PACINNO. The study uses a survey conducted on a sample of 841 randomly selected micro, small and medium firms in 8 countries of the Adriatic region. The data collection was conducted from July 2014 till December 2014 in eight project partner countries: Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro and Slovenia. The questionnaire was created on the basis of previous CIS instrument with additional variables according to the literature review on firm-level innovation. The data were analyzed using a series of parametric and non-parametric tests. Examination of the possible connection between service activities and social innovation resulted in insignificant Chi-Square, meaning that firms which are concentrated on service activities do not introduce social innovation in a significantly higher or lower fashion than the ones which are not concentrated on service activities. To determine the relation between export and social innovation, another Chi-Square test was applied. The analysis showed a significant relation between export and social innovation. To determine the relation between business performance and innovating (product/process innovation), socially innovating and non-innovating firms, the one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc test was used and accompanied by the Kruskal-Wallis’ test. This analysis showed a significant difference between companies that introduced social innovation, the companies that introduced product or process innovation and those that did not innovate at all. Further cross tabulation shows significantly higher scores on the business performance self-assessment scale for social innovators than the other two groups. Based on the analyzed data it can be concluded that firms that introduced social innovation perceive their business performance as higher than their competitors. Also, socially innovative firms are exporting significantly more than other firms. Considering the results, it can be noted that this study offers a unique contribution in identifying the role of social innovation in shaping the firms’ operations and performance. Besides that, this research contributes to the under-researched area of social innovation in the Adriatic region with quantitative empirical results. Taking into account the existing connection between social innovation, business performance and export activities, the results can serve as guidelines for the policy makers and other relevant stakeholders on multiple levels, particularly in the field of social innovation in the Adriatic Region.

Social innovation ; business performance ; export ; survey ; Adriatic Region

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