Title: The effect of knowledge appreciation and development of internal ideas on the competitiveness of service industry companies

Authors: Marcin Soniewicki

Addresses: Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poznań, Poland

Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyse the influence of two factors on competitiveness of various types of service industry companies: 'knowledge appreciation' and 'development and implementation of new ideas'. The article is based on quantitative data from a survey of 380 service industry companies. The responses were measured on a five-grade Likert scale. The statistical significance of differences between various responses was examined using the Mann-Whitney U test and correspondence analysis. The results indicate that both factors influence the competitiveness of service industry companies. Moreover, firms with a low intensity of concentration on any of these factors were less competitive than their closest competitors. Another aspect analysed in the study was the competitiveness of service industry companies of different sizes with different levels of intensity of both factors. The results show that these factors are especially important for the competitiveness for micro and small companies.

Keywords: service industry; knowledge; knowledge management; change; innovation; innovative behaviour; new ideas; competitiveness; competitive advantage; performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2021.115496

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2021 Vol.29 No.4, pp.431 - 448

Received: 14 Nov 2019
Accepted: 16 Jun 2020
Published online: 07 Jun 2021 *

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