Innovation configurations in sport clusters: The role of interorganizational citizenship and social capital

Innovation plays a central role in the sports sector. However, delivering innovative solutions is increasingly becoming a network-level phenomenon, reinforcing the need to understand the network-level dynamics. This research explores this phenomenon by building on two complementary theoretical foundations: interorganizational citizenship behavior (ICB) and social capital. The research aims to understand how different configurations of dimensions of social capital and interorganizational citizenship behavior facilitate product and process innovation. The research uses data from a horse industry cluster in France and applies fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), a method developed explicitly for configurational analysis. The results unveil a series of configurations leading to both product and process innovation. The findings show that the different dimensions of ICB and social capital have both positive and negative impacts on innovation. Moreover, the results chart multiple paths to innovation and highlight differences between product and process innovation in sports clusters.