Innovation adoption and training activities in SMEs

This article adopts the resource-based view and the complementarities approach to examine how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) combine the adoption of organisational and technological innovation with investments in training activities. The results of econometric analysis on a panel data-set of about 118 Italian manufacturing SMEs furnish a quite complex picture of the effects of innovation on training. On the one hand, organisational innovation seems to be related to higher investments in (formal and informal) internal training; specifically, it is the adoption of autonomous teams and multi-skilling practices that is associated with the coverage and the intensity of internal training, whereas job rotation is negatively associated with the coverage of external training. On the other hand, the general index of technological innovation does not show any significant relationship with training activities, whereas the individual technological innovation variables are associated with internal training. Specifically, the coverage of internal training is positively affected by ICT innovation and negatively affected by process innovation. These results demonstrate that SMEs have limited awareness of the risks associated with underinvesting in training during the implementation phase of the innovation process. The implications of such findings for research and practice are discussed.