Open innovation, dynamic organizational capacities and innovation performance in SMEs: Empirical evidence in the Tunisian manufacturing industry

In this paper, the main objective is to examine inbound open innovation adoption by exploring its antecedents in terms of dynamic organizational capabilities, its implications on innovation performance, but also its mediating role between these capabilities and Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) innovation performance. Therefore, a conceptual model was proposed and empirically tested on the basis of data extracted from a survey involving a sample of 228 Tunisian manufacturing SMEs and analyzed through the Structural Equation Modeling method. In doing so, this paper adds to the existing literature on open innovation in SMEs and fills a neglected theoretical gap by proposing a link between dynamic capabilities theory and the open innovation paradigm, two literatures that have little overlap, to improve current understanding of innovation performance in SMEs. Ultimately, by empirically confirming the significant relationship between dynamic organizational capacities and innovation performance through the mediating role of open innovation, our results are mainly relevant for entrepreneurs and innovation managers in SMEs who can find valuable guidance on how to strengthen innovation performance under the nexus between the dynamic capabilities perspective and open innovation by focusing on the development of three capabilities that are dynamic capabilities, absorptive capability, and appropriation capabilities.