A Framework for Resilient Innovation Management in Lodging Organizations

This study aims to develop a framework of innovation management in lodging organizations that withstands stable and crisis environments. Innovation is an intricate and ambiguous phenomenon regardless of environmental conditions (Christensen et al., 2016). However, the complexity and volatility of the business environment has skyrocketed in recent years. Moreover, the strong influence of the positivism paradigm and the adaptation of innovation models developed for widely different economic sectors (e.g., manufacturing and technology) has limited theory development in hospitality innovation research (Hjalager, 2010). This qualitative exploratory study aims to address these issues by taking a longitudinal approach with two stages of data collection. The first stage was conducted during 2019, which was a bountiful year for many hospitality businesses. A purposeful sample of 25 lodging executives of 3–5-star properties were selected for semi-structured interviews. The second stage will be conducted during 2023 with interviews with another 25 or more – depending on data saturation – lodging executives of properties with similar characteristics. Considering the setting of this study, which is the Florida Lodging industry, the gap between the stages of data collection was chosen because Florida businesses went through two significant business disruptions between 2020 and 2022: the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ian. Consequently, these contrasting data collections may lead to a more resilient and comprehensive framework of innovation management in lodging organizations. The data will be analyzed with Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clark, 2012). The resulting framework may help lodging managers make sense of this nebulous phenomenon, even in times of crisis, and manage innovation in a way that allows them to reap its benefits more easily. The study may also serve as a first step for future theory development in hospitality innovation management since it would be one of the first efforts to study the phenomenon throughout all its stages.