The role of Innovation Orientation within Business and Management Studies: Towards a framework for research synthesis in Innovation Orientation

The role of Innovation Orientation within Business and Management Studies has garnered much academic interest in recent years. This paper reports a Systematic Literature Review to synthesise research within the Innovation Orientation field. A disciplined screening process resulted in a sample of 64 papers, with 51 of these articles published in the last decade.

A framework for synthesising the research was produced. The initial review highlighted the lack of clarity surrounding the term Innovation Orientation and the initial phase of the research focussed on gaining clarity on how Innovation Orientation had been defined within the literature. The second phase of the research synthesis utilised a coding scheme developed by the authors and highlighted whether the focus of each article was on antecedent variables linked with innovation orientation or alternatively whether each article had taken a holistic view of innovation orientation, that linked innovation orientation to outcomes and organisational performance measures. The research studies within the sample were analysed and thematically grouped to allow for an accurate synthesis of Innovation Orientation research to date. This process resulted in a new inclusive and current conceptual model of Innovation Orientation being presented.

Finally the paper offers suggestions for further advancing the development of this area of research in terms of (1) expanding and consolidating the existing theoretical and conceptual models depicting innovation orientation; (2) expanding and further exploring a range of antecedent factors, their interdependence and their impact upon organisational Innovation Orientation and (3) studying further the links between organisation performance and innovation orientation.