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on Economics of Strategic Management |
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Issue of 2009‒01‒24
nine papers chosen by Joao Jose de Matos Ferreira University of the Beira Interior |
| By: | Janez Prašnikar (Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana); Tanja Rajkoviè (Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana); Maja Vehovec (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb) |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses the innovative performance of firms and underlying competencies, namely technological, marketing and complementary. Competencies as a broader concept are regarded as networks of capabilities and other firm assets, and can be used for cross-industry comparisons. The study is based on a survey carried out among 86 established Slovenian and Croatian manufacturing companies addressing competencies which they employ in their 105 distinct product lines. Three distinct segments of firms are established based on innovative performance indicators. We used the techniques of multivariate statistics, including cluster analysis and the analysis of variance. The results imply that the most innovative firms simultaneously develop technological, marketing and complementary competencies. They operate in industries in which new technologies offer considerable new opportunities. Weaker technological competencies can be to some extent compensated by strong marketing and complementary competencies. The findings also support the notion of Slovenia and Croatia being technology follower economies, primarily relying on imitation as a source of innovation. |
| Keywords: | competencies, innovative performance, technology followers, technology leaders |
| Date: | 2008–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iez:wpaper:0802&r=cse |
| By: | Argentino Pessoa (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto); Mário Rui Silva (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto) |
| Abstract: | Natural resources and physical cultural resources, termed in this paper as “Environmental Resources”, can be important assets for regional competitiveness and innovation. In recent years, these kinds of assets are being more considered in regional development strategies, because they can be a source of differentiation and of new competitive advantages. In this paper we discuss the role of environmental resources in regional innovation policies. We begin by relating environmental resources with regional development and by emphasizing some opposite views in what refers to the function of environmental resources in regional development. Next we deal with the relationship between regional competitive advantages and innovation strategies. The specificities and problems that arise when the aim is to construct competitiveness advantages through environmental resources valorisation are the core of section 3. In that section, we highlight the characteristics of environmental resources and we check the applicability of the “natural resource curse” to the dynamics based on the valorisation of environmental resources. The reasons that justify the public intervention as well as difficulties concerning the adequate level of intervention (local / regional / national) are also examined. The paper ends with some conclusions and policy implications. |
| Keywords: | Competitiveness, Environment, Innovation, Innovation Policies, Regional Development |
| JEL: | O3 Q0 Q2 Q5 R5 |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:por:fepwps:308&r=cse |
| By: | Erik Stam (Tjalling Koopmans Institute, Utrecht School of Economics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), The Hague, The Netherlands; Max Planck Institute of Economics - Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy group, Jena, Germany); Karl Wennberg (Centre for Entrepreneurship and Business Creation, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden.) |
| Abstract: | Innovative start-ups are an important driver of economic growth. This article presents empirical evidence on the effects of R&D on new product development, inter-firm alliances and employment growth during the early life course of firms. We use a dataset that contains a sample of new firms that is representative for the whole population of start-ups. This dataset covers the first six years of the life course of firms. R&D reveals to play several roles during the early life course of high tech as well as high growth firms. The effect of initial R&D on high tech firm growth runs via increasing levels of inter-firm alliances in the first post-entry years. R&D efforts enable the exploitation of external knowledge. Initial R&D also stimulates new product development later on in the life course of high tech firms, but this does not seem to affect firm growth. R&D does not affect the growth rate of new low tech firms, which seems to be driven mainly by the growth ambitions of the founding entrepreneur. The results show that R&D matters for a limited but important set of new high tech and high growth firms, which are key in innovation and entrepreneurship policies. |
| Keywords: | New Firms, Innovation, R&D, firm growth, alliances, product development |
| JEL: | D21 L23 L25 L26 M13 |
| Date: | 2009–01–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2009-004&r=cse |
| By: | Niels Bosma (Urban and Regional research Centre Utrecht (URU), Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands); Erik Stam (Tjalling Koopmans Institute, Utrecht School of Economics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), The Hague, The Netherlands; Max Planck Institute of Economics - Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy group, Jena, Germany); Veronique Schutjens (Urban and Regional research Centre Utrecht (URU), Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands) |
| Abstract: | Do firm entry and exit improve the competitiveness of regions? If so, is this a universal mechanism or is it contingent on the type of industry or region in which creative destruction takes place? This paper analyses the effect of firm entry and exit on the competitiveness of regions, measured by total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Based on a study across 40 regions in the Netherlands over the period 1988-2002, we find that firm entry is related to productivity growth in services, but not in manufacturing. The positive impact found in services does not necessarily imply that new firms are more efficient than incumbent firms; high degrees of creative destruction may also improve the efficiency of incumbent firms. We also find that the impact of firm dynamics on regional productivity in services is higher in regions exhibiting diverse but related economic activities. |
| Keywords: | firm entry, firm exit, turbulence, regional competitiveness, total factor productivity |
| JEL: | L10 M13 O18 R11 |
| Date: | 2009–01–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2009-003&r=cse |
| By: | Consoli, Davide; Ramlogan, Ronnie |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to analyse the dynamics of networks in which new knowledge emerges and through which it is exchanged. Our conjecture is that the structure of a network cannot be divorced from the dynamics of the knowledge underpinning its activities. In so doing we look beyond studies based on the assumption of exogenous networks and delve into the mechanisms that stimulate their creation and transformation. In the first part the paper adopts a functional perspective and views networks as constructs aimed at the coordination of knowledge; accordingly, network structure is an emerging property that reflects the employment of an agreed strategy to achieve a collective scope. In the second part these themes are articulated in relation to the dynamics of medical innovation and enriched by an empirical study on the long-term evolution of medical research in Ophthalmology. This exercise highlights the connection between changes in scientific and practical knowledge and the reconfigurations of the epistemic network over a forty-year period. By mapping different network structures we capture variety in the gateways of knowledge creation – that is, the network participants – as well as in the pathways – that is, the inter-organisational collaborations. Our goal is to analyse how these patterns of interaction emerge and transform over time. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Network analysis; Inter-organizational Relationships |
| JEL: | D83 O33 D85 O31 |
| Date: | 2009–01–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:12791&r=cse |
| By: | Andrew Sharpe; Jean-François Arsenault |
| Abstract: | A brief analysis of British Columbia’s productivity performance and the state of the drivers of this performance reveals that five areas merit additional focus and research. They are, in the proposed order of completion: Education and literacy, including professional qualifications and education for targeted groups such as aboriginals and recent immigrants, credentials recognition. Public and private investment, including public infrastructure, business investment and taxation structure. Research and innovation, including R&D investment, product and process innovation, knowledge diffusion and technology adoption. Resource reallocation, including competition policy, improving market mechanisms, product market regulation and foreign ownership rules. Trade and migration, including interprovincial and international movement of goods and services, skilled and unskilled immigration and emigration and interprovincial migration. |
| Keywords: | Productivity, Diagnosis, British Columbia,Human Capital, Physical Capital, Innovation, |
| JEL: | E20 E22 R50 R53 R11 O40 |
| Date: | 2008–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:0809&r=cse |
| By: | Frédéric Rychen (LEST - Laboratoire d'économie et de sociologie du travail - CNRS : UMR6123 - Université de Provence - Aix-Marseille I - Université de la Méditerranée - Aix-Marseille II, IDEP - Institut d'Économie Publique - GREQAM); Jean-Benoît Zimmermann (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - Université de la Méditerranée - Aix-Marseille II - Université Paul Cézanne - Aix-Marseille III - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - CNRS : UMR6579) |
| Abstract: | During the recent years, clusters have been at the heart of a vast literature supposed to bring new arguments and perspectives to local development preoccupations. Two complementary factors are stressing for firms and territories the importance of governing the interactions of industrial actors: the globalisation of the economy and the technology and the emergence of a knowledge based economy. In local systems, agents are mostly connected with agents situated in their spatial proximity, while these local networks, as open systems, benefit from the long distance connections that some of their members are able to activate. Co-location of actors in a geographical proximity by itself is not a sufficient condition for co-ordination but can contribute to its efficiency, provided the existence of other shared dimensions among agents: organic level, representations, projects, ... As far as efficiency and performances of "classical" clusters are not only the result of the intensity and quality of internal but also external interactions and coordination, into which extent can we still consider the relevance of interaction structures restricted to bounded geographical areas? In this paper we turn our attention to the way industrial actors take into account the question of the local-global articulation for the strategic building of their own ego-network, that is the set of links they may build in order to achieve efficient interactions with partners and competitors. Thus interfaces between local and global relationships are a key feature that can be achieved through different approaches. To this aim we introduce the two concepts of knowledge gatekeeper and temporary proximity that appear as providing alternative approaches of actors partnering, likely to provide a better flexibility in the local-global trade-off. We will then present the basic form of the ego-networks on which the individual firm is able to build her relational neighbourhood. This raises the question of the combination of individual ego-networks into a consistent networked structure into which local networks are articulated by the way of local-global interfaces. On this basis we present a typology of the basic new forms of clustering where time and space can be alternatively and complementarily combined in order to achieve more flexibility and costs reduction of the localisation game. |
| Keywords: | Industry ; territory ; globalisation ; knowledge based economy ; local-global ; knowledge gatekeeper ; temporary proximity ; clusters ; network ; structure |
| Date: | 2009–01–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00353425_v1&r=cse |
| By: | Vicente Cuñat; Maria Guadalupe |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of changes in foreign competition on the structure of compensation and incentives of U.S. executives. We measure foreign competition as import penetration and use tariffs and exchange rates as instrumental variables to estimate its causal effect on pay. We find that higher foreign competition leads to more incentive provision in a variety of ways. First, it increases the sensitivity of pay to performance. Second, it increases whithin-firm pay differentials between executive levels, with CEOs typically experiencing the largest wage increases, partly because they receive the steepest incentive contracts. Finally, higher foreign competition is also associated with a higher demand for talent. These results indicate that increased foreign competition can explain some of the recent trends in compensation structures. |
| Keywords: | Incentives, Performance-related-pay, Wage Structure, Promotions, Demand for talent, Globalization, Product Market Competition |
| JEL: | M52 L1 J31 |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1134&r=cse |
| By: | Tanasoiu, Georgiana Lavinia; Enea, Constanta |
| Abstract: | Social responsibility is not charity, it’s a duty. Today we see all major companies following social responsibility. Social duty is not only attention allotted consumers, customers and contractors, communions and environment, as well employees and implicit their family. In concept triple bottom line, social duty presume achievements of social level, financial plane and environment level and follow a positive impact on society and, in same time, financial achievements. Education is an area that gets a lot of interest. |
| Keywords: | management consultancy; consultancy company; efficient management |
| JEL: | E00 G10 J53 |
| Date: | 2008–11–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:12938&r=cse |