Abstract
This paper proposes a model to explain how ethics play a role to produce innovation in hospitality. Literature from social responsibility and ecological management was reviewed in order to state how ethical values induce advances by stimulating teams and breakthroughs. A survey was carried out based on structured questionnaires, filled in by 134 hotel managers in Gran Canaria (Spain). By means of path analysis, it was demonstrated the antecedent role played by ethical management to cause knowledge exchange in employees, as well as innovations in hotels. Nevertheless, breakthroughs cannot be induced if there is an extrinsically motivated environmental management. To be more specific, radical innovation was produced at a higher rate if managers highlighted the importance of ethics over profit, rather than if they placed profitability ahead of ethical considerations, notwithstanding that both approaches tend to provoke disruptive novelties. In addition, incremental innovations are a consequence of knowledge exchange between hotel employees. Finally, knowledge exchange is induced in the context of ethical leadership consisting of general social responsibility. The conclusions drawn from this work are that ethics is a causative part of innovation and that practical implications provide specific and differential measures that help to bring about incremental and radical innovation.
Highlights
Scientists have often conceived of innovation as being controlled and moved onward by ethics
The first factor was called ethics over profit while the second was named profit over ethics, since the former regards the predominance of social responsibility for revenue whereas the latter highlights the reverse, the prevalence of company profitability over ethical principles
Ethics is a causative part of innovation in hospitality, as it is stated in Hypothesis 3
Summary
Scientists have often conceived of innovation as being controlled and moved onward by ethics. Any novelty is posed as a source of potential damage or risk in business [1,2] and in tourism [3,4,5], but not as the consequence of ethics. Innovation should be an essential outcome of ethics, given that innovation is not inherently good [6]. For this reason, it is not of value if it lacks responsibility. We still don’t know too much about it, since how ethical management influences innovation and organises knowledge represents a gap in the research [8]
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