Innovative behaviour in social economy: the Andalusian case

Abstract

In a globalized context (characterized by high product mobility) with imperfect mobility of technology and productive activities, innovation increasingly becomes an essential element for business survival and for economic development of regions, both to follow or maintain leaders’ rhythm, and/or to maintain followers’ absorptive capacity to be able to remain in the market in spite of increasing concurrence by globalization. The aim of this paper is to present a cognitive model on innovative behaviour of Andalusian Social Economy (or third sector) enterprises, useful for researchers, business administrators, public administrators and policy makers. To reach it, after an introduction to define the context and importance of social economy in Andalusia, we define a theoretical model in which decision to innovate depends on internal and external aspects and its interactions; this model is estimated by an econometric dichotomous Probit model applied to a sample of 515 Andalusian firms of social economy