Patterns of organisational innovation: comparison of western and eastern countries in Europe

West European (WE) countries perform better in innovation than their counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In this paper organisational innovation (OI) patterns in CEE compared to WE are studied. The paper exploits the Community Innovation Survey 2008, 2010 and 2012 and uses this firm-level innovation data from 12 countries. The authors introduce a novel approach, which elucidates seven types of OI patterns based on an intensity of firms’ engagement in OI. According to this notation most companies in WE were found to be complex internal innovators or complex innovators. In CEE, the largest share of companies in this period were exclusively work management-oriented. This picture remains the same throughout the three waves of the survey. The differences in OI can largely be explained through the differences in the background variables of the companies or through other innovation types, so if CEE and WE companies converge in these terms, much of the difference in OI also disappears. Nevertheless, there is also a part of the divergence which can be related to the societal level through path dependent developments in these countries.