Method

Abstract

My motivation for this dissertation is based on the fact that even though service organizations are of growing relevance in the last decades, only little scientific knowledge has been gained concerning innovation in terms of development of new services until today. Accordingly, there is still a research gap in the understanding of service innovation. Furthermore, even though previous research acknowledges the importance of studying factors influencing the development of service innovations, the “current understanding of the critical resources and activities to develop new services is inadequate” (Menor, Tatikonda, & Sampson, 2002: 135). That is comparably little attention has been given to the study of resources that affect the ability to innovate of service organizations. Accordingly, there is a need for empirical evidence concerning not only the nature of resources, but also categories that positively (drivers) or negatively (barriers) influence their utilization and thus the ability to innovate in service organizations.