The relationship between service innovation and performance: a bibliometric analysis and research agenda proposal

Interest in the theme of service innovation has a direct impact on the increase of studies on the subject in organizational research, especially in the sense of understanding the performance of innovations and how they contribute to better firm performance. In this context, the main purpose of this article is to present the scenario of studies that address the concepts of innovation in services and performance in conjunction with organizational research. For this, a bibliometric study was carried out with journals of administration with impact factors greater than or equal to 0.8. The analysis of 61 publications showed that the articles – in most part – were empirical, cross-sectional, and quantitative, with data collection source based on questionnaires and data analysis with inferential statistics. The Service Industries Journal and the Journal of Business Research published the most literature on the subject, and three universities in Taiwan had the highest number of articles published by authors linked to them. The studies mainly focus on clusters, the theme of strategy, and issues such as market orientation, performance, management, and product development. Having analyzed the references, the diversity found allows for the affirmation that there is no consolidated theoretical framework being used by the articles. Future research agendas are proposed, highlighting the need for investigations that consider the customer in the relationship between service innovation and performance, as well as longitudinal and mixed studies that triangulate data collection sources.