The many shades of ‘openness’: an application of item response theory to open innovation research

This study addresses one of the most basic research questions investigated in the Open Innovation (OI) literature: how open are firms? This question has remained partially unanswered given the challenges encountered by empirical research in assessing the relevance of specific OI practices within the OI model, as well as the types of activities perceived by managers as OI benefits or concerns. To provide an answer to this question, we suggest a framework using Item Response Theory to improve over current measures of firms' openness and test it on a sample of 383 technology‐based SMEs. Our theoretical model conceives openness as an instance of how firms make decisions regarding the adoption of different OI practices based on their evaluation of OI benefits and concerns. Focusing on the relationship between firm‐level differences in terms of openness and the types of OI practices adopted by these firms, we show that significantly different levels of ‘OI maturity’ are required to broaden the scope of external partnerships and to shift from non‐pecuniary OI modes (relation‐based approaches) toward pecuniary (transaction‐based) practices. Our results have relevant implications for the OI literature and provide new managerial insight into OI adoption.     

Technology Exploitation Paths: Combining Technological and Complementary Resources in New Product Development and Licensing

Technological resources in the form of patents, trade secrets, and know‐how have become key assets for modern enterprises. This paper addresses a critical issue in technology and innovation management, namely, the commercial exploitation of technological resources resulting from research and development (R&D) investments. Extracting economic value from these resources by maximizing the benefits for shareholders is an extremely challenging task because technological resources are intangible, idiosyncratic, uncertain, predominantly tacit, and with poorly defined property rights. In their attempt to extract the maximum value from their technological resources, firms increasingly combine their internal exploitation through new product development (NPD) with external exploitation through licensing. However, most existing studies on NPD and technology licensing have treated the two exploitation paths independently and in isolation, which has resulted in two separate research streams using different theories and addressing different managerial challenges. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by developing and testing a comprehensive conceptual framework that simultaneously considers the antecedents affecting the successful implementation of NPD and licensing strategies as well as their consequences on firm profitability. The paper in particular investigates the effects of the interplay between technological resources and three types of complementary resources, marketing, manufacturing, and relational. We test the model using structural equation modeling on a sample of 733 Spanish manufacturing firms observed from 2003 to 2007. The data provide support for the existence of different paths to market firm technologies: an internal path, whereby the ownership of technological resources fully explains NPD performance, and an external path, whereby high intensity of marketing and relational resources reinforces the positive effect of technological resources on licensing performance. This sustains the relevance of the resource‐based value‐enhancing effects of complementary resources in licensing, as opposed to the motivation‐reducing effects advanced by transaction cost‐based literature. Moreover, the empirical analysis shows a substitution effect between NPD and licensing, whereby their simultaneous pursuit at intense levels is associated with lower profit margins. This provides evidence of the much theorized, but seldom tested, rent dissipation effect. These findings offer several contributions to research on licensing, NPD, open innovation, and the resource‐based view of the firm. On a managerial level, they suggest that achieving maximum value from proprietary technologies may not entail exploiting them both through external and internal paths. Managers are also informed that the resource combinations that enhance licensing performance include marketing and relational resources.     

An Efficiency Analysis of Proposed State and Local Sales Tax Reforms

With few exceptions, state and local general sales and use taxes are levied primarily on tangible goods. Secular trends in production and consumption of goods and services, as well as legislated exemptions and exclusions, have eroded sales tax bases. A number of reforms designed to reduce base erosion have been proposed, including base broadening, conversion to a consumption tax, and wholesale replacement of sales taxes with income taxes. Each proposal has potential to shore up sales tax bases. From an economic perspective, the policy choice should turn on efficiency, equity, and simplicity. This paper reports on a computer analysis of efficiency effects. The results suggest that (i) base broadening can increase economic efficiency, (ii) converting to a consumption tax base dominates base broadening, (iii) replacing sales taxes with higher income taxes could produce large efficiency losses, (iv) base broadening could generate efficiency gains even if untaxed remote sales become a “sizable” fraction of total sales, and (v) even partial base broadening could produce sizable efficiency improvements.     

Economy-wide reform and agricultural recovery: Observations of economic Darwinism among transition economies

The fitness of an economy and its prospects for continued prosperity will be measured and determined by its robustness and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Some countries in transition are adapting much more easily than others to rapid changes in the orientation of their economy, the common objective of which is to achieve economic growth through the adoption of a range of characteristics generally associated with a market economy. Economic growth does not have to be very fast, but it must be efficient and sustainable. Policy adjustments must address political economy concerns, while seeking to achieve macroeconomic equilibrium and price stabilization, competitiveness, efficiency and flexibility, and the protection of the living standards of the most vulnerable population The process of agricultural sector reform will be determined both by economy-wide policies and sector-specific policies. This paper first outlines a taxonomy of the objectives of agricultural sector reform, and then discusses the way in which indirect price interventions (specifically exchange rate and interest rate policies, expansive fiscal policies and industrial protection policies), influence agricultural growth. Lessons of experience drawn from the UNDP/World Bank Trade Expansion Program structural and sectoral adjustment operations in Poland, and the cases of New Zealand and Chile are employed to illustrate not only the constraints that countries face in this regard, but also in identifying targets for further action. The third section presents what is called the architecture of incentives for agriculture'. In defining a strategy of agricultural sector reform, experience has shown that a structure of incentives can be developed that creates an environment ripe for agricultural growth-incentives relating, for example, to taxation, prices, foreign investment, privatization and demonopolization, decentralization and institutional reform. Special considerations that will require additional attention by policy-makers outside of this structure include the maintenance of GATT-legal principles in trade policies, issues relating to tariffication (including concerns about price risk management, food supply, and the role of food aid), input and credit subsidies as a means to correct for market failures, and the role of regional trading blocks in world trade.     

Alcohol abuse among adolescents: regional evidence from Spain

The aim of this paper is to offer regional evidence from Spain on alcohol abuse among adolescents. Specifically, we identify the determinants of the decision to abuse alcohol with respect to the five most important regions of Spain, as well as for the country as a whole. To this end, we estimate Probit specifications using data drawn from the Spanish Surveys on Drug Use in the School Population corresponding to 1994, 1996 and 1998. The results first reveal patterns that are qualitatively similar, but quantitatively different. Similarly, it would appear that economic policies aimed at reducing the access of adolescents to alcohol may have a positive effect on reducing abuse. Finally, the results suggest that encouragement be given to healthy habits among young people, as well as to the fight against education failure and the launching of information campaigns that accurately portray the current lifestyle of adolescents.     

The influence of strategic dimensions and the environment on the introduction of internet as innovation into small and medium-sized enterprises

The expansion of the Internet has been spectacular, but only limited research has analysed how environmental and strategic variables simultaneously influence its organisational implementation and how small firms decide to adopt the use of the Internet. This study simultaneously examines the influence of three environmental dimensions (hostility, complexity and dynamism), and the three strategic dimensions (entrepreneurial, technological and administrative), upon the decision to introduce the use of the Internet into small business enterprises. We base our conclusions upon the data obtained from interviews with the managers of a sample of 94 small and medium-sized Spanish enterprises. Our results support a multidimensional view of environmental and strategic characteristics and show that all these variables constitute significant factors in deciding whether to introduce the Internet into company use. Logistic regression also shows the greater influence exerted by internal (strategic) factors and size rather than by environmental factors.     

HOW ORGANIC IS YOUR ORGANIZATION?– DETERMINANTS OF ORGANIC/MECHANISTIC TENDENCIES IN A PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM

This study compares two units within a major public accounting firm in order to determine their organic/mechanistic tendencies and establish the variables most closely related to these organizational characteristics. Results from a sample of 67 professionals balanced by unit and hierarchical level indicate that the process-oriented elements of an organization are the more relevant indicators of organizational development and provide a system for evaluating an organization on an organic/mechanistic continuum.