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ABSTRACT
Strong competition forces banks to adopt new technologies to redesign business processes, improve products and services, and support other organizational changes necessary for better performance. The separate areas of literature on strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, and specific characteristics of the company's change process propose their respective importance for successfully implementing business innovation. While these factors may indeed be important to enhance company competitiveness, the existing literature comprises mostly opinions and anecdotal accounts, and contains limited empirical evidence supporting their relationship to successfully implementing business innovation. A field test among commercial banks branches in the Southeast United States has been used to test an integrated model of these relationships. The results provide empirical evidence about the importance of strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, and some specific characteristics of the bank's change process used to conduct innovation projects as determinants of the bank's success with business innovation. The specific items used for measuring the main constructs provide further insights into how bank managers should go about developing these important areas within their organizations.
KEYWORDS: Strategic leadership, competitive intelligence, management of technology, banking innovation, management of change.
INTRODUCTION
While the importance of innovation and adoption of new technologies to improve the performance of the banking/financial services sector is widely recognized (Fung, 2008; Barrutia, 2005; Alexander & Hixon, 2008; Slonaker, 2005; Conrad, 2007), success implementing the required changes is far from assured (Bielski, 2008a; Fisher, 2009; Bielski, 2008b; Trombly, 2007; Watts & Garret, 2006). According to the large body of literature, regardless of the technologies and/or change methodologies being employed, in general the factors important to innovation success or failure are many but can be grouped into a few major areas. Most authors would agree that the change process used for innovation has to bear certain characteristics. Many researchers have looked to improvements in strategic leadership as critical to developing an organization environment conducive to innovation (Waldman, Ramirez, House, & Puranam, 2001; Williams, 2004). To help define and prioritize important problems and opportunities to the organization, many have proposed Competitive Intelligence (CI) programs as important to company success (Tarraf & MoIz, 2006; duToit, 2003; Vedder & Guynes, 2002; Guimaraes & Armstrong, 1998). Further, effective Management of Technology (MOT) is thought to...