Drivers of innovation in state-owned enterprises: evidence to public enterprises from Ecuador

Abstract The current studies on innovation do not consider or tend to ignore innovation in Public Enterprises (PE) and their effects on other organizations. Recent evidence shows that PE are not necessarily inferior to their private counterparts (Kowalski, Büge, Sztajerowska, & Egeland, 2013). This article investigates the determinants of innovation in PE of Ecuador, for the first time, through an empirical study. It identifies internal and external determinants of innovation and the effect on the probability of innovation in PE. In addition, the variable environmental care is included as an internal determinant; this variable has not been analyzed in previous work on innovation in PE. The data used come from the Survey of Activities of Science, Technology, and Innovation of Ecuador (ACTI) published in 2014. The proposed model is estimated by logit linear regression. The results show that there are determinants that have a positive effect on the probability of innovation and they are of two types: internal (workers training, technology acquisition and environmental care) and external (government, through the support program for quality management).