| |
Abstract |
While the tourism industry pre-pandemic was steadily growing worldwide, it has often been portrayed as a sector with challenges tied to knowledge development and innovation. This has been explained by the industry being dominated by small and medium sized businesses, high levels of labor turnover, challenges tied to seasonality, rapid changes of ownership and lack of dedicated career ladders (Hjalager, 2002). The nature of the tourism experience makes cooperation necessary in the industry, but the small scale of the businesses means limited resources for network cooperation. The fragmentation of the industry may also halt cooperation, as it consists of entities of different scales from different areas, that hinders communication and knowledge transfer (Czernek, 2017). Instead of trying to cover the whole of a fragmented industry, this research will examine knowledge development in businesses that offers similar products. Aldrich and Fiol (1994) use the concept of organizational populations to describe groups of organizations with similar products and/ or processes. Research on knowledge transfer in tourism indicate that businesses with similar product products has the potential for more specific learning, and more direct imitation (Weidenfeld et al, 2010:610), and that product similarity is positively related to exploitative knowledge transfers resulting in innovation (Weidenfeld et al, 2010; Sørensen, 2007). |
|
