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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2015‒06‒27
five papers chosen by Laura Ştefănescu Centrul European de Studii Manageriale în Administrarea Afacerilor |
| By: | Obschonka, Martin; Stuetzer, Michael; Gosling, Samuel D.; Rentfrow, Peter J.; Lamb, Michael E.; Potter, Jeff; Audretsch, David B. |
| Abstract: | In recent years, modern economies have shifted away from being based on physical capital and towards being based on new knowledge (e.g., new ideas and inventions). Consequently, contemporary economic theorizing and key public policies have been based on the assumption that resources for generating knowledge (e.g., education, diversity of industries) are essential for regional economic vitality. However, policy makers and scholars have discovered that, contrary to expectations, the mere presence of, and investments in, new knowledge does not guarantee a high level of regional economic performance (e.g., high entrepreneurship rates). To date, this “knowledge paradox” has resisted resolution. We take an interdisciplinary perspective to offer a new explanation, hypothesizing that “hidden” regional culture differences serve as a crucial factor that is missing from conventional economic analyses and public policy strategies. Focusing on entrepreneurial activity, we hypothesize that the statistical relation between knowledge resources and entrepreneurial vitality (i.e., high entrepreneurship rates) in a region will depend on “hidden” regional differences in entrepreneurial culture. To capture such “hidden” regional differences, we derive measures of entrepreneurship-prone culture from two large personality datasets from the United States (N = 935,858) and Great Britain (N = 417,217). In both countries, the findings were consistent with the knowledge-culture-interaction hypothesis. A series of nine additional robustness checks underscored the robustness of these results. Naturally, these purely correlational findings cannot provide direct evidence for causal processes, but the results nonetheless yield a remarkably consistent and robust picture in the two countries. In doing so, the findings raise the idea of regional culture serving as a new causal candidate, potentially driving the knowledge paradox; such an explanation would be consistent with research on the psychological characteristics of entrepreneurs. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Personality, Knowledge, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Psychology, Regions, Cities |
| JEL: | L26 M13 O3 O30 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:65202&r=knm |
| By: | Schubert, Torben (CIRCLE, Lund University & Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Using data from the German Community Innovation Survey (CIS) from 2008 we analyze whether innovation partnering increases the risk of experiencing infringement of intellectual property (IP). The results show that depending on types of IP innovation partnerships increase the risk of infringement by up to 37% compared to the average risk in the sample. The results suggest that this massive increase can be reduced by intellectual property rights and contracts to govern the partnerships. Yet we show that formal protection mechanisms do not eliminate the sources of opportunistic infringement, since that infringement in innovation partnerships more commonly relates to the infringement of formally unprotected intellectual property, such as tacit knowledge and know-how. |
| Keywords: | infringement; intellectual property; innovation; partnerships; alliances; protection |
| JEL: | O32 O34 |
| Date: | 2015–06–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2015_023&r=knm |
| By: | Baier, Elisabeth (PTV Group AG, Karlsruhe, Germany); Rammer, Christian (ZEW, Mannheim, Germany); Schubert, Torben (CIRCLE, Lund University & Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the effects of captive offshoring of innovation activities on the ability of the firms to adapt their organizational structures. Basing our arguments on complexity theory, we use three consecutive waves of the German part of the Community Innovation Survey to test our hypotheses. We find an inverted u-shape of innovation offshoring on the effectiveness of organizational adaptability, implying an optimal threshold value of innovation offshoring. This value is 11% for share of offshored R&D, 15% for downstream innovation activities such as local market adaptation, and 34% for design activities. We also analyze several contingency variables. In particular, we show that the costs of innovation offshoring in terms of reduced organizational adaptation are increased by a regional dispersion of the offshoring activities and strong embeddedness in onshore networks. We also show that smaller firms find it easier to deal with the management complexity induced by geographical dispersion of innovation activities. |
| Keywords: | Internationalization; Offshoring; Innovation; Organizational Adaptation; Organizational Adaptability |
| JEL: | O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2015–06–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2015_022&r=knm |
| By: | Fernanda De Negri; Luiz Ricardo Cavalcante; Patrick Franco Alves |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the university-enterprise interactions in the Brazilian innovation system by focusing on the characteristics of the public research infrastructure which affects its propensity to interact with the industrial sector. Logistic regressions have been used to identify, in a wide set of explanatory variables, the characteristics of the research infrastructure which increase its probability of supplying technological services to firms. Besides the primary data collected from a survey carried out in a sample of institutions related to the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), data concerning the scientific and technological production of the researchers affiliated to each laboratory have also been used in the regressions. The choice of the explanatory variables was based in a brief literature review on the role of the research infrastructure in the national innovation systems. Aiming at supporting the discussion of the results of the regressions, this review also included a brief report of the recent interactions between the research infrastructure and the industrial sector in Brazil. The main findings of the logistic regressions are: i) the size of the laboratory (as measured by the number of affiliated researchers) and of the qualification of its research team positively and significantly affects its propensity to interact with the industrial sector; ii) multidisciplinary laboratories tend to interact more with the industrial sector than laboratories focused on a single field of expertise; iii) there seems to be a tradeoff between scientific publications and market oriented research, since the number of papers published by the affiliated researchers is negatively correlated to the probability of supplying technological services to firms. |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipe:ipetds:0206&r=knm |
| By: | HOSONO Kaoru; HOTEI Masaki; MIYAKAWA Daisuke |
| Abstract: | Research and development (R&D) expenditures are affected potentially by the present and past use of R&D tax credits through two channels. While the present use of R&D tax credits promotes R&D investment through a reduction in capital cost, the past use promotes the investment through an increase in internal funds. We empirically investigate how these two channels affect the R&D investment of Japanese manufacturing firms by using firm-level data. Our results can be summarized as follows. First, the effect of the present use of R&D tax credit on R&D investment is smaller for firms that are more likely to depend on external finance (i.e., firms that operate in industries with higher dependence on external finance) than for those that are less likely to depend on external finance, suggesting that higher agency cost associated with the larger use of external finance partially mitigates the effect of R&D tax credits. Second, the past use of R&D tax credits does not necessarily lead to significant increase in the internal funds for firms that are more likely to depend on external finance, which implies that the use of R&D tax credits does not contribute to the promotion of firms' R&D investment. These results jointly imply that the effect of R&D tax credits on R&D investment is limited for financially constrained firms. |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:rdpsjp:15030&r=knm |