Abstract
Latin-American countries are characterised by societal problems like violence, crime, corruption, the informality that influence any entrepreneurial activity developed by individuals/organisations. Social innovations literature confront “wicked problems” with strong interdependencies among different systems/actors. Yet, little is known about how firms use innovation to hedge against economic, political or societal uncertainties (i.e., violence, social movements, democratisation, pandemic). By translating social innovation and institutional theory approaches, this study analyses the influence of formal institutions (government programs and actions) and informal institutions (corruption, extortion and informal trade) on the development/implementation of enterprises’ technological initiatives for protecting/preventing of victimisation. By using data from 5525 establishments interviewed in the 2012/2014 National Victimisation Survey of the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), our findings shows that formal conditions (government programs) and informal conditions (corruption, extortion and informal trade) are associated with an increment in the number of enterprises’ social innovations. Our findings also contribute to the debate about institutional conditions, social innovations, and the role of ecosystems’ actors in developing economies. A provoking discussion and implications for researchers, managers and policymakers emerge from this study.
Highlights
The accumulation of knowledge related to innovation and technology transfer literature has been focused on the effectiveness of policies that promotes entrepreneurial innovations (Meissner et al 2017; Guerrero and Urbano 2019), as well as the influence of these policies on the enterprises’ strategies for capturing innovation performance (Scuotto et al 2017; Guerrero et al 2019; Link and Scott 2019)
By using data from 5525 establishments interviewed in the 2012/2014 National Victimisation Survey of the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), our findings shows that formal conditions and informal conditions are associated with an increment in the number of enterprises’ social innovations
The study analysed the influence of formal institutions and informal institutions on the development/ implementation of enterprises’ technological initiatives for protecting/preventing of victimisation
Summary
The accumulation of knowledge related to innovation and technology transfer literature has been focused on the effectiveness of policies that promotes entrepreneurial innovations (Meissner et al 2017; Guerrero and Urbano 2019), as well as the influence of these policies on the enterprises’ strategies for capturing innovation performance (Scuotto et al 2017; Guerrero et al 2019; Link and Scott 2019). An ongoing academic debate is how “wicked problems” (i.e., violence, crime, extortion, corruption, informality and social mobilisations) are affecting any entrepreneurial and innovative activity developed by individuals/organisations in emerging economies (Hoskisson et al 2000; Lee et al 2015; Subramaniam et al 2015). The recognition of societal problems provides threats/opportunities for new/established entrepreneurs (Howard-Grenville et al 2014). For this reason, it is relevant to understand how individuals/organisations develop/implement alternatives to reduce/prevent the effect of socio-economic problematics on their entrepreneurial activities (Greenwood et al 2011; Schweitzer et al 2015)
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