Essential research in technology management

Now that we live in a world full of cutting-edge breakthroughs, technology management seems to be particularly essential. The Journal of Business Research has published a special issue entitled “Essential Research in Technology Management.” This special issue includes 11 papers. Six of them are from the 2007 Chinese Society for Management of Technology Annual Meeting and Conference held at Feng Chia University, Taiwan, while the other five are invited. All of them went through double-blind reviews and revisions. These papers contribute to various perspectives of technology management in different countries.     

External and internal influences on R&D alliance formation: Evidence from German SMEs

Relying on relational capital theory and transaction cost economics (TCE), this study identifies factors that impede or promote alliance formation in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Environmental uncertainty and knowledge intensity impede firms' R&D alliance formation; the focal firm's overall trust in partners enhances alliance formation. Trust interacts positively with environmental uncertainty and knowledge intensity to affect alliance formation in SMEs. The findings reflect data from a longitudinal sample of 854 German SMEs, captured over eight years from 1999 to 2007.     

Measuring Innovation in European Industry

This paper analyses the results of the 1993 Community Innovation Survey (CIS). Fifty per cent of European firms introduced a product or process innovation during 1990-92. The share of innovating firms varies between industrial sectors and firm size. The percentage of innovating firms is higher for large firms than for smaller ones. In high-tech sectors this share is two thirds and for traditional ones is one third. The largest part of firms' expenditure for innovation is linked to the adoption and diffusion of technologies through machinery and equipment, which absorbs 50% of firms' innovation expenditure. R&D activities represent, on average, 20% of total innovation expenditure while other innovative activities, such as design and trial production, account respectively for 10% and 11%. The mix of innovation inputs, especially R&D and investment, is strongly correlated with firm size, displays little change across countries and varies greatly across industries.     

R&;D in SMEs: a paradox?

This paper has three objectives: (1) to survey the relevant literature addressing the (apparent) paradox of Research & Development investments carried out within Small and Medium Enterprises; (2) to provide focused summaries of the articles in this special issue; (3) to draw some general conclusions in terms of policy implications.

Innovation, R&D cooperation and labor recruitment: evidence from Finland

This article investigates the role played by one type of firm interaction, namely R&D cooperation, and also the acquisition of labor, in the promotion of industrial innovations. We employ a unique innovation dataset from Finland which combines firm specific information about the innovation performance of the firms along with their individual characteristics, as well as firm specific information regarding the origins of their recent labor acquisitions. Analyzing this data allows us to identify the different roles which the knowledge spillovers and labor markets play in the innovation process. Our results suggest that small firms are generally more innovative than large firms; R&D cooperation is an essential feature of innovation, but the variety of cooperation is of little importance; and labor acquisition appears to be only of limited importance for innovation.

Objects and Subjects in Technological Interdependence. Towards a Framework to Monitor Innovation

Technology, even more than other aspects of economic life, is characterized by a strong interdependence across both sectors and organizations. However, we still know little about the determinants and impact of technological interdependence. The standard input-output analysis is unable to explain interdependence in technological life since a large proportion of innovations are either untraded or are disembodied from products. Innovations which are not appropriated by the innovators are not signalled by prices. Moreover, input-output tables do not systematically consider exchanges within economic organizations, such as firms. This paper proposes a more complex accounting framework for innovation which would monitor the technological field of the innovation and the product where it is used, as well as the producer-user interrelationship.     

Introduction. The Internationalisation of the Innovation Process

The international economics of business and management has focused - both in the academic literature and in corporate and public policy discussions - increasingly on issues of globalisation, innovation and 'competitiveness'. These issues, and in particular their interrelation, are analysed in detail in this Special Issue of the International Journal of the Economics of Business. This opening article aims to set the scene by considering how the rather distinct literatures around the above three topics can best be drawn upon in order to focus on what implications the new global economic environment has for the economics of business and public policy.     

我国中小企业财务管理现状分析与对策研究

中小企业是国民经济重要组成部分其财务有其自身独特性.本文在分析中小企业财务管理问题的现状的基础上,提出加强其管理的相关对策.     

Critical success factors in project management: implication from Vietnam

This study will assess successful project performance based on key project factors. The indicators of project success are cost, time, technical performance and customer satisfaction as used in previous studies. The sample consisted of 239 project members and managers currently involved in infrastructure projects in Vietnam. Regression analysis was used to test five hypotheses developed from theories on project success. Three groups of factors including manager competencies, member competencies and external stability have significant positive relationships to the success criteria. The completion and implementation stages in the project life cycle are also positively related to success. The implementation stage of a project moderates both the effects of external stability and organization support on success. The implication for project managers is that implementation is the key stage in determining the success of projects.     

The roles of R&;D in new firm growth

Innovative start-ups are an important driver of economic growth. This article presents empirical evidence on the effects of research and development (R&D) on new product development, interfirm 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 of the whole population of start-ups. This dataset covers the first 6 years of the life course of firms. It is revealed that R&D plays 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 is through increasing levels of interfirm 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 seem 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.

Mobility of public researchers, scientific knowledge transfer, and the firm's innovation process

The present study provides evidence on the mobility effects of researchers from the public R&D system with regard to firm's innovation process. This issue is particularly novel and important as these researchers contribute to the production and transfer of knowledge previously developed and accumulated in the public R&D system. The findings confirm that scientific knowledge which public researchers provide has a positive influence on both inputs and outputs of the firms' innovation process. The fact that firms have access to additional knowledge which is complementary to that they already hold represents a spur for exploiting and applying this new knowledge. The firms in this study continually increased their in-house R&D investments. As a result of these investments firms create new knowledge of a unique and valuable type. The study draws two important conclusions geared to providing a greater efficiency in human resource management and to improve the design of technology policies.     

External technology acquisition and firm performance: A longitudinal study

External technology acquisition has been viewed as an important method used by firms to achieve higher economic returns. However, only a few studies have evaluated the contribution of external technology acquisition to firm performance. This lack of research is surprising because the benefits of external technology acquisition to innovation output have been emphasized extensively in the literature. This study therefore investigates the extent to which external technology acquisition effects a firm's performance, and how this effect is moderated by internal R&D efforts. This analysis concentrates on the electronics-manufacturing industry, taking advantage of the relative abundance of data on longitudinal investigation variables. A longitudinal sample allows this examination to control extraneous effects and to provide more convincing evidence for the relationship between external technology acquisition and firm performance. The analytical sample comprises a total of 341 Taiwanese electronics-manufacturing firms over the period from 1998 to 2002. The least square dummy variable analysis method reveals that external technology acquisition does not provide a significant contribution to firm performance per se; however, the positive impact of external technology acquisition on firm performance increases with the level of internal R&D efforts. Verifications for robustness and the split-sample analyses both validate the results in the setting of larger firms.     

Horizontal Agreements and R&D Complementarities: Merger versus RJV

We study the decision of two firms within an oligopoly concerning whether to enter into a horizontal agreement to exploit complementarities between their R&D activities and if so, whether to merge or form a research joint venture (RJV). In contrast to horizontal merger and motivated by real-world evidence, we incorporate a probability that an RJV contract will fail to enforce R&D sharing. We find that a horizontal agreement always arises in equilibrium, which is consistent with empirical findings that R&D complementarities between firms positively influence the formation of horizontal agreements. The insiders’ merger/RJV choice involves a trade-off: While merger offers certainty that R&D complementarities will be exploited, it leads to a profit-reducing reaction by outsiders on the product market, where competition is Cournot. Greater contract enforceability (quality) and R&D investment costs both favour RJV. Interestingly, the insiders may choose to merge even when RJV contracts are always enforceable, and they may opt to form an RJV even when the likelihood of enforceability is negligible. We also explore the welfare implications of the firms’ merger/RJV choice.     

R&D investments in family and founder firms: An agency perspective

Investments in R&D can influence a firm's ability to develop new products and to create and adopt innovative technologies that may enhance productivity. However, due to uncertainty regarding the outcome, investments in R&D may lead to an agency problem between the owners and the managers of a firm. Family and founder firms are often considered to be different in their agency situation than other firms, which may have an influence on R&D investments. This paper analyzes R&D spending in family and founder firms versus other firms. The results show that while family ownership decreases the level of R&D intensity, ownership by lone founders has a positive effect not only on R&D intensity but also on the level of R&D productivity. The paper contributes to the understanding of the role of entrepreneurship in making high risk/high return R&D decisions.     

Untangling African indigenous management: Multiple influences on the success of SMEs in Kenya

This article examines the nature of indigenous management in relation to the success of SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa, taking Kenya and six SMEs under the management of Kenyan Africans, Kenyan Asians and Kenyan British as examples. It proposes that management systems, styles and practices, when appropriate to the local cultural contexts, will give rise to successful organizations. By formulating tentative hypotheses about this relation after reviewing the literature, the data from these case studies are interrogated first by using a ‘template’ derived from theories of management control to investigate the inter-continental cultural influences on local management, and then inductively to modify and develop the original hypotheses in view of possible intra-country influences. Paternalism, emerges as a common theme in the way cultural influences are combined, suggesting different types of paternalism for in-group and out-group organizational members. This is a possible success factor for local SMEs. Implications for future research in these areas and management practice are discussed.     

浅谈图书馆电子阅览室的创新管理

近几年来,随着我国科学技术发展脚步的不断加快,越来越多的先进设备被应用到图书馆电子阅览室中,在增加阅览室服务功能的基础上,也给图书馆电子阅览室的管理带来了挑战。这里主要对我国目前图书馆电子阅览室管理中存在的问题进行分析,并在此基础上结合电子阅览室的发展前景,提出对图书馆电子阅览室管理的改善建设,以此来将图书馆电子阅览室的作用最大限度的发挥出来。