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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Hottenrott, Hanna; Lopes-Bento, Cindy |
| Abstract: | R&D collaboration facilitates pooling of complementary skills, learning from the partner as well as sharing risks and costs. Research therefore repeatedly stressed the positive relationship between collaborative R&D and innovation performance. Fewer studies addressed potential drawbacks of collaborative R&D. Collaborative R&D comes at the costs of coordination and monitoring, requires knowledge disclosure and involves the risk of opportunistic behaviour by the partners. Thus, while the net gains from collaboration can be high initially, cost may start to outweigh those benefits if firms engage in multiple collaborative projects simultaneously. This study explicitly considers a firm's collaboration intensity, that is, the share of collaborative R&D projects in the firms' total R&D project portfolio. For a sample of 2,891 firms located in Germany, active in abroad range of manufacturing and service sectors and of which 86% are SMEs, we indeed find that increasing the share of collaborative R&D projects in total R&D projects is associated with a higher probability of product innovation and with a higher market success of new products. While we can confirm previous findings in terms of gains for innovation performance, we also find that collaboration has decreasing and even negative returns on product innovation if its intensity increases above a certain threshold. Consequently, the relationship between collaboration intensity and innovation has an inverted-U shape. In particular, costs start outweighing benefits if a firm pursues more than about two thirds of its R&D projects in collaboration. This result is robust to conditioning market success to the introduction of new products and to accounting for the selection into collaborating. |
| Keywords: | innovation performance,product innovation,R&D partnerships,collaboration intensity,SMEs,transaction costs,selection model,endogenous switching |
| JEL: | O31 O32 O33 O34 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:14108&r=ppm |
| By: | Miranda Sarmento, J.; Renneboog, L.D.R. (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | Abstract: This paper presents the main reasons why public-private partnerships (PPPs) are adopted as well as the possible disadvantages for the public and private sectors. By means of two case studies on bridge construction and railway infrastructure (Fertagus and Lusoponte), we elucidate how a PPP is structured and financed. Furthermore, the two case studies illustrate how the renegotiation processes are conducted when the public-private contracts have to be altered and what determines (un)successful renegotiations. |
| Keywords: | Public–Private Partnerships; Concessions; Renegotiations; Public Procurement; Project Risk |
| JEL: | G32 H54 L91 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiucen:d276f5b6-49cb-40c7-b83c-1f1cf50ab7f5&r=ppm |
| By: | Pemer, Frida (Dept. of Management and Organization) |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the question of how management consulting services are evaluated in client organizations. By building on an interview study with organization members in two client organizations and drawing on discourse theory, the current paper shows that clients seldom perform formal evaluations of consulting projects. Instead, the projects are evaluated informally. The findings from the empirical analysis indicate that this informal evaluation takes place through different types of talk, in which the projects and involved actors are given a discursively constructed worth. The paper contributes to the informal evaluation literature by shedding light on how the informal evaluation is carried out and how the worth of management consulting projects are discursively constructed by clients using frame-talk and mythopoetic-talk. It also highlights the importance of regarding the informal evaluation not only as an individual activity, but rather as shared among groups and socially, politically and contextually influenced. The paper also contributes to the management consulting literature by nuancing the hitherto homogenous picture of clients, and giving insights into the mechanisms behind why some projects are perceived by clients as more successful than others. |
| Keywords: | management consultant; client; informal evaluation; worth; discourse; talk |
| Date: | 2014–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhb:hastma:2014_001&r=ppm |
| By: | Isabelle Leroux; Paul Muller; Béatrice Plottu; Caroline Widehem |
| Abstract: | A device central to the French cluster (Competitiveness pole) policy is the financing of collaborative projects aimed at enhancing the innovation capacities of firms. In turn, increasing in innovation capacities give rise to new business opportunities that firms only can seize by evolving their business model. Business model accounts for the ways value is developed, delivered and captured by firms (Chesbrough 2007). However, internal and external constraints may impede their evolution. Those constraints are particularly harmful for SME: 1. Firms must dedicate specific resources to innovate their business models (Helfat and Winter 2011) but SME may arguably face strong constraints on devoted resources. 2. The capacity of innovating a business model may require firms to be able to influence local collective rules (Sabatier et al. 2012). However, unless being locally pivotal, a SME's influence may be too low to enable it to exert a significant influence on those rules, especially when significant business model innovation is at stake. Our paper discusses the role played by local institutions while addressing the issue of business model evolution in SME. It specifically focuses on the governing bodies of Competitiveness poles. We argue that those governing bodies play a central role in releasing stakeholders from business model evolution impediments as they act as innovation intermediaries. We base our research on the study of BRIO, a publicly funded collaborative project undertaken by members of Vegepolys, a Competitiveness pole located in French Pays-de-la-Loire Region and dedicated to specialized vegetal industries. Horticultural SMEs, INRA and the University of Angers have been involved in this project. It has aimed to design new tools and methodologies for creating new varieties of plants through varietal creation. Our case reveals that Vegepolys' governance body has played a key role in the success of the project by translating scientific (produced by INRA researchers) into technological knowledge and by being a go-between facilitating the establishment of new collective rules. |
| JEL: | L10 O31 Q16 |
| Date: | 2014–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa14p693&r=ppm |
| By: | Misani, Nicola; Pogutz, Stefano |
| Abstract: | We examine the roles of the outcome and process dimensions of environmental performance in determining financial performance as measured by Tobin’s q. Outcomes refer to the impacts of the firm on the natural environment, while processes are the firm’s actions to reduce these outcomes. We focus on a specific outcome—carbon emissions—and suggest that it affects Tobin’s q non-linearly. We find that firms achieve the highest financial performance when their carbon performance is neither low nor high, but intermediate. We also find that environmental processes moderate this relationship as they reinforce firms’ financial performance through improved stakeholder management. This mixed picture suggests that firms do not generally internalize the costs of poor carbon performance, but those that stand out in both environmental outcomes and processes achieve net financial benefits. These findings are based on a sample of carbon-intensive firms that disclosed their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the Carbon Disclosure Project from 2007 through 2013. |
| Keywords: | GHG emissions; climate change; environmental management; financial performance; Tobin’s q |
| JEL: | C21 L20 M13 Q20 |
| Date: | 2014–11–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:60359&r=ppm |
| By: | Jiøà Novosák |
| Abstract: | There is a high research and political interest in regional disparities now. Regional disparities are at the heart of prominent theories of regional development as well as of the ambitious project of European integration. Moreover, regional policies at various spatial levels are formulated in order to reduce the problems arising from large regional disparities. However, the multi-level character of regional policies evokes the question of their coherence. It is noteworthy that such a question is frequently mentioned in scholar literature but with limited empirical evidences. The intent of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on the coherence of regional policies, using the Czech Republic as a case study. The EU cohesion policy has become the dominant source of funding for regional development in the Czech Republic after its accession to the European Union in 2004. In addition, there is a national regional policy in the Czech Republic which defines the so called regions with concentrated state aid at the district level. The goal of this paper is to assess the spatial coherence of these two policies. In other words, the regional pattern of the EU cohesion policy expenditures in the programming period 2007-2013 in the Czech Republic is mapped considering the position of the regions with concentrated state aid. Besides the overall assessment, the spatial pattern of the EU cohesion policy expenditures is decomposed thematically as well. The assessment is based on the database of more than forty-six thousand projects which were co-financed from the EU cohesion policy. The main findings of the research point at ambivalent spatial coherence of the EU cohesion policy on one hand and Czech national regional policy on the other. Thus, there is not a relatively higher allocation of the EU cohesion policy expenditures in the regions with concentrated state aid. This is true also for thematic decomposition, and especially for more progressive themes such as R&D, innovation and new technologies. Altogether, the findings suggest that additional measurements are necessary in order to increase the spatial coherence of the policies. Some suggestions related to the territorially based instruments of the EU cohesion policy for the programming period 2014-2020 are given. |
| Keywords: | regional policy; EU cohesion policy; coherence of regional policies; Czech Republic; |
| JEL: | R12 R58 O18 O22 |
| Date: | 2014–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa14p911&r=ppm |
| By: | Manning, Richard |
| Abstract: | The paper assesses the multilateral development financing system in the light of the replenishments of three key funds in 2013. It argues that the replenishments showed strong continuing support for each institution, but identifies challenges emerging fro |
| Keywords: | multilateral aid system, International Development Association, African Development Fund, Global Fund, OECD/DAC, development finance |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2014-110&r=ppm |