国外旅游创新问题研究的前沿述评

A Frontier Review of Overseas Research on Tourism Innovation

旅游创新是服务科学、旅游学科的一个新兴研究领域。本文通过梳理1994—2014年发表于旅游管理专业期刊和重要管理期刊上的国外相关文献,从学科发展的历史角度对当前旅游创新理论构建中几个基本关键科学问题的相关研究成果进行系统回顾和梳理,这些基本问题涉及创新内涵与分类、创新动力、创新过程中的知识来源、行为识别、绩效评价与测度研究等方面,在总结出一系列共识与争论焦点、研究面临的若干障碍问题基础上,展望了未来该领域的研究要点。

Innovation research in tourism is a young phenomenon. After reviewed all the tourism innovation-re- lated papers which were published during the period of 1994--2014 on the top tourism journals and management journals, the current research status has shown the similar, adverse tendency that recent limited studies, focusing on one or the other of these issues, have, until now, largely remained separated and ignorant of one another. Each one of the different approaches brings key elements to the understanding of things by posing a series of relevant questions still locked up in the limits of their specific concepts, they remain blind to some key aspects of understanding, that can only be brought to the fore if the junction that we are hoping for taking place. Therefore, it is our conviction that ＂systemic＂ theoretical framework should now be developed in order to allow for a much more thorough understanding of the innovative activity in tourism, establish a dialogue with researchers working within the mainstream of research on innovation, and generate more and more real theoretical outputs in fu- ture. In this framework,we offer a diagnosis of the ＂state of the primary classical innovation issues＂ developed for the manufacturing or general services industries that have been applied to the tourism industry at the firm level, and some recommendations for overcoming identified problems. The study addresses three basic issues：First, the nature and types of innovation are presented. Second, we ex- amine the most important driving forces for innovation, including entrepreneurship, technology push and the exist- ence of innovation system. And, third, the innovation process is acknowledged, including the source of innovation knowledge, innovative behaviors, and measurement of innovation in the tourism at the firm level. This review mainly focuses on the foreign literatures. It is concluded that：in relation to the first issue, it has been found necessary to divide it into three sub-is- sues. The review begins with the debate about which one, the Schumpeterian theory or the Service Innovation theo- ry,provides concepts and types adaptable to the special characteristics of the tourism industry. And then the paper provides the historical evolution of the typology of tourism innovation, particularly in what were the main forces be- hind its evolvement instead of listing all the types simply. Further, preference toward the study of innovation process outcomes, such as product innovation, process innovation, and organizational innovation etc. , is captured with more intensity in empirical research applied to tourism firms. As for the second issue, the paper indicates that apart from technology push, the research about either entrepre- neurship or innovation system as the most important driving force for innovation, is highly divided in its conclu- sions. For example, some researchers claim there is ＂non-entrepreneurs＂ in tourism firms, which conclusion is main- ly based on the personal characteristics and motives in terms of the Schumpeterian perspective. Others have identi- fied that there is so-called ＂lifestyle entrepreneurs＂, where the majority of work has still centered on its definitional problem. Although technology, especially ICT has attracted a significant strand of research interest with its own agen- das and institutions. But we also find that the more recent studies, do not in fact go much further inside the black box of organizational structures, technology and technical change are regarded as an exogenous factor, too often the firm remains a ＂passive＂,＂ black box＂. According to the last issue, it also has been found necessary to divide it into three sub-issues. The first part is the source of innovation knowledge. The second part lays special stress on analyzing the context of the mechanism of innovation generation, including the behaviors identification, the factors and the particularity and complexity of inno- vation. The third part reviews and analyses prior studies in the context of approaches to research innovation perform- ance in tourism. In a word,the amount of tourism innovation research in the tourism and management journals appears less than expected. Publication of empirical work has not increased over time over the past 20 years, and theoretical work re- mains at a low level. Even for empirical studies, there is a lack of methodological sophistication of analytical .and sta- tistical tools. Therefore, the paper not only summarize the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing, but also suggest that more theoretical work is needed to map a course of study and to develop a framework unique to the innovation domain of tourism research, including approaches ,processes ,network of innovation in tourism.