Muslim entrepreneurs in secular Turkey: Distributors as a source of innovation in a supply chain

As organisations seek to develop partnerships and more effective information links with trading partners, internal processes become interlinked and span the traditional boundaries of firms. In the past, the mission of companies was simply to make profit and generate return on shareholders' investments. Nowadays, when the business environment is uncertain and competition is very high, innovation is very important for organisations. The focus of this paper is to investigate how innovation is applied in a secular Islamic country. To do so we observe the Şahinler Ferforge Company (ŞFC), located in Bursa, Turkey; our focus is the impact of distributors in the innovation process of this company. Activities regarding innovation in ŞFC are positively related with the success of the company and the tendency is to increase activities, especially with its distributors and to build a long relationship. The highest degree of involvement of the distributors in the innovation process by ŞFC takes place in four stages: 1) scoping; 2) project selection; 3) commercialisation; 4) evaluation. Our results show that the management of ŞFC is willing to involve distributors more in the innovation process.