Social innovation: A research on tourism enterprises operating in Antalya destination

The primary aim of the dissertation is to investigate social innovation in tourism enterprises operating in the Antalya destination. It is also aimed to reveal the visions of the enterprises related to social innovation. For these purposes, the social innovation scale was developed and tested from the perspective of entrepreneurship. In the dissertation, the concept of social innovation has been taken into consideration through different perspectives and the similarities and differences between them have been revealed. Thus, the scope and framework of social innovation has been established. Then, social innovation scale was developed and tested in order to investigate social innovation in tourism enterprises operating in the Antalya destination and the data were collected with developed scale. The scale was applied to middle or upper level managers of tourism enterprises operating in Antalya destination. The data related to the obstacles to innovation application was also collected with scale. Besides, the data obtained by the applied scale were subjected to analyze such as frequency, t-test and ANOVA. According to the analysis, enterprises tend to innovate in order to increase service quality, to reduce cost and to gain competitive advantage, respectively. Besides, it has been determined that the most important factor that impedes the innovation practices is "cost". When items are evaluated in the context of personnel practices, the item with the highest mean is "our organization provides paid maternity leave". When items are evaluated in the context of environmental practices, the item with the highest mean is "our organization implements waste management". When items are evaluated in the context of social practices, the item with the highest mean is "our organization supports local suppliers". When items are evaluated in the context of socio-economic practices, the item with the highest mean is "our organization supports projects that create new jobs for the local community".