Influence of personal mastery on organizational performance through organizational learning and innovation in large firms and SMEs

This paper analyzes the influences of personal mastery on organizational performance, both directly and indirectly through the dynamic capabilities of organizational learning and innovation. Although these indirect interrelations are very important for improving organizational performance, they are not usually explored in research. We confirm these influences empirically in both large firms and SMEs, basing our research on a sample of 401 Spanish firms. The results reveal that in both types of firms: (1) personal mastery influences organizational performance directly and indirectly through organizational learning and innovation; (2) organizational learning influences organizational performance positively, both directly and indirectly through organizational innovation; (3) organizational innovation influences organizational performance positively.     

Geographical and cognitive proximity effects on innovation performance in SMEs: a way through knowledge acquisition

This study explores the relative influence of geographical and cognitive proximity to explain innovation performance. This paper deepens the controversy between the significance of both types of proximity, contributing to a better understand their interconnections. The study further analyzes to what extent knowledge acquisition provides a congruent explanation of the effectiveness of innovation in proximity contexts. The paper has tested a structural model based on a sample of 224 Spanish footwear firms. Footwear industry is a mature and traditional industry with a significant presence of the territorial agglomeration of firms all over Spain. Findings suggest both a direct and indirect effect of cognitive proximity on innovation performance. However, an excess of geographical proximity produces spatial lock-in, thus limiting the access to new knowledge and lowering innovations. By contrast, proximity in terms of goals and culture leads firms belonging to a territorial cluster to achieve knowledge acquisition resulting in relevant innovation. Findings suggest that although transferable valuable knowledge exists in clustered contexts firms should adopt a proactive behavior to have access common knowledge and in order to generate effective innovations.     

A study of intellectual property protection policies and innovation in the Indian pharmaceutical industry and beyond

We study the relationship between Trade Related Intellectual Property rights (TRIPS) and innovation. Using export data, this paper aims at assessing the relative impact of TRIPs on innovation, namely the ability of the Indian pharmaceutical industry to enter new markets with existing or new drugs. It examines whether India’s decision to comply with TRIPS influenced its innovation, and develops a theoretical model, where innovation, being measured by the likelihood of exports of one product from one identified country to partner countries, is influenced by factor, demand and trade conditions. The paper draws on quantitative data, using Probit and Logit techniques. The model is illustrated using empirical evidence from the Indian pharmaceutical industry. We find statistically significant evidence that India’s compliance with TRIPS is associated with new trade flows from India to partners. However we do not find statistically significant evidence of a relation between TRIPS compliance and value of exports. The interpretation is that TRIPS compliance has different effects: it is a necessary condition to favor innovation but it is not sufficient to increase exports value (competitiveness). Finally, we study to what extent this model can be generalized to other developing countries and/or industries.     

The effects of market orientation and service innovation on service industry performance: An empirical study

This study examines how market orientation affects a firm’s service innovation and consequently, the firm’s market and financial performance. The findings indicate that if a firm uses customer orientation, the firm is more likely to adopt incremental service innovation, while if a firm uses competitor orientation, the firm is more likely to adopt radical service innovation. Finally, incremental and radical service innovations lead to greater market performance and in turn, better financial performance.     

电子订单分割在汽车制造业中的应用

一汽轿车公司应用电子订单分割后,KD件供应链得到整体优化,外物流基本实现平准化到货,内物流基本实现按生产进度供给.     

The impact of HRM practices on service quality,customer satisfaction and performance in the Indian hotel industry

This article reviews findings from a first survey of employers' views on collective bargaining reform that now forms the centrepiece of post-apartheid South Africa's experiment with 'democratic corporatism'. Using factor analysis, three constructs have been identified that inform employer attitudes to a revised system of sectoral bargaining: 'autonomous capacity'; 'conditional association'; 'external threat'. Despite the potential for anomie, these factors appear significant in the way they consistently explain an employer's orientation towards associational membership and, by proxy, sectoral bargaining. Moreover, at least two-thirds of responding firms identified strongly with each of the three factors but, typically, firms with weak capacity and in need of collective protection from the other actors are most likely to associate. Regression analysis further reveals company well-being, foreign ownership and union presence to have a significant impact on these three factors to varying degrees. Equally, two of the factors (autonomous capacity and external threat) impact significantly on an employer's tolerance of free-riding in others and on the temptation to do so for oneself. Overall, for this sample of firms, employer bodies are to be viewed more as 'political devices' than as 'economic agents' in the immediate aftermath of political liberation. In this sense, they are different from their European counter-parts. However, there is an increasing likelihood of this changing as the flexibility agenda looms ever larger in employers' minds and as issues of 'political insecurity' correspondingly fade.     

北京汽车产业“集团化发展”二次创业探索

以北汽集团为依托的北京汽车产业,在过去十年跨越式发展的基础上,面对国际、国内汽车产业发展的新形势,以建设成为具有自主创新能力,拥有自主核心技术,形成有国际影响力的自主品牌,具备持续发展潜力和国际竞争力的大型汽车企业集团为目标,以打造自主品牌乘用车为突破口,全面建立北汽集团自主创新体系,探索集团化发展二次创业的新路子。     

我国汽车行业产业政策对产业集中度影响分析

文章分析了我国汽车产业发展现状和汽车产业集中度的变化趋势,选取1990～2006年我国汽车行业的统计数据,建立了汽车产业政策对我国汽车产业集中度的影响分析模型,借助线性回归方法,分析了产业政策等因素对产业集中度的影响。实证分析结果表明:产业政策、期初集中度和产品差异性对产业集中度的提高有促进作用;企业进入对产业集中度的提高有负向的阻碍作用。     

The effect of environmental regulations,top management commitment,and organizational learning on green product innovation: Evidence from automobile industry

This paper proposes and empirically examines a model to investigate the effect of environmental regulations, top management commitment (TMCO) and organizational learning toward green product innovation (GPI). The proposed theoretical model, grounded in dynamic capabilities view (DCV) and upper echelons theory, is analyzed by Partial least squares (PLS) method using the data from Indian automotive manufacturing firms. The findings indicate the importance of TMCO and organizational learning for implementing GPI (in response to regulations), and achieve desired performance. Further, organizational learning fully mediates between commitment of top management and GPI. The findings can be useful for managers in automotive manufacturing firms who are interested toward implementing GPI. The paper contributes to green innovation literature by empirically examining the role of TMCO and organizational learning for GPI.     

Supply chain management maturity and performance in SMEs

Supply chain maturity models attempt to disseminate best practices in supply chain management (SCM). One basic idea behind these models is that increased maturity will lead to improved supply chain performance, which in turn will lead to improved financial performance. There is, however, little empirical evidence about the relationship between supply chain (SC) maturity and financial performance, specifically in SMEs. The results of this study indicate that there is a strong relationship between SCM maturity and SC performance in SMEs, as well as some relationships between SCM maturity and financial performance. One conclusion is that if firms use maturity indicators in the Supply Chain Operations Reference areas to improve their processes, they will most likely achieve positive effects on supply chain performance and probably also on financial performance.     

Open innovation in SMEs: Trends,motives and management challenges

Open innovation has so far been studied mainly in high-tech, multinational enterprises. This exploratory paper investigates if open innovation practices are also applied by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on a database collected from 605 innovative SMEs in the Netherlands, we explore the incidence of and apparent trend towards open innovation. The survey furthermore focuses on the motives and perceived challenges when SMEs adopt open innovation practices. Within the survey, open innovation is measured with eight innovation practices reflecting technology exploration and exploitation in SMEs. We find that the responding SMEs engage in many open innovation practices and have increasingly adopted such practices during the past 7 years. In addition, we find no major differences between manufacturing and services industries, but medium-sized firms are on average more heavily involved in open innovation than their smaller counterparts. We furthermore find that SMEs pursue open innovation primarily for market-related motives such as meeting customer demands, or keeping up with competitors. Their most important challenges relate to organizational and cultural issues as a consequence of dealing with increased external contacts.     

Forecasting innovation performance via neural networks—a case of Taiwanese manufacturing industry

In the ‘knowledge economies’ era, most managers have discovered that technology can be considered as the key asset in sustaining the competitive advantage of their corporations. Many researchers have tried to discuss the relationships between technological performance and other influential factors, such as strategic management, information resources, etc. But they do not mention the issues concerning how each dimension influences innovation performance and how to forecast innovation performance based on these dimensions. This study presents a forecasting model that predicts innovation performance using technical informational resources and clear innovation objectives. Specifically, we propose a neural network approach, which utilizes the Back-Propagation Network (BPN) to solve this problem. Also we examine the results and compare them to those attained using the statistical regression method. The result shows that the BPN method outperforms the statistical regression method as far as forecasting performance concerned. With this method, a decision maker can predict innovation performance and adjust allocated resources to match his/her company's innovation objectives.     

Entrepreneurship,innovation and economic growth

The linkages among entrepreneurship, creativity, innovation and economic growth are only vaguely understood presently. This paper is an attempt to improve that understanding. The first step in establishing the linkages requires the formulation of knowledge about the psychological make-up of entrepreneurs. These questions are pertinent: What motivates humans to become entrepreneurs? Are entrepreneurs “rational economic men”? How important are monetary rewards to entrepreneurial creativity ? The second step requires information about how the human brain functions. The brain is bi-hemispheric and both sides of the brain play an important role in human decision-making. Nevertheless, we have a cultural bias in favor of the functions performed by the brain's left side. The third step requires an understanding of the process of creation and innovation. Several stages in this process have been identified. The stages of preparation, incubation, and illumination involve the brain's right hemisphere while the verification stage involves the left hemisphere. The final step integrates the first three. We assume that entrepreneurship is an essential determinant of economic growth, that the entrepreneurial function involves creation and innovation, and that entrepreneurship can be taught. This article is intended to provoke thinking and research incorporating new insights from several disciplines. These insights appear to bear more on entrepreneurship than is generally acknowledged.     

Assessing and ranking the innovation ability and business performance of global companies in the aerospace and defense industry

This study examined the innovation ability and business performance of global companies in the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry by using dynamic data envelopment analysis and ranking methods with the DuPont model. Results indicated that compared with business performance, A&D companies exhibit lower scores and higher standard deviations in the innovation ability, which signified that they should first work on reducing the gap in the level of innovation ability. DuPont analysis indicated that typical A&D companies exhibit the highest ROE. Finally, this study offers managers and policymakers detailed insights into potential areas of improvements in innovations, business performance, and profitability.     

Listed SMEs and innovation: the role of founding board members

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - Drawing from the resource-based view of the firm, Penrosean theory, and the resource dependence theory, it is argued in this study that the...     

Corporate sustainability and innovation in SMEs: Evidence of themes and activities in practice

Recently, innovation processes towards sustainable development have received increasing attention in academic literature. This research introduces the combination of insights from innovation theory, sustainable development practice and small business characteristics to unlock new knowledge on factors that influence the translation of sustainable innovation within small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) into practice. The sustainability themes and activities as described for large companies (i.e. in the sustainability reporting and management literature) were used as starting point in this study. It presents empiric results of the PRIMA Project conducted within the rubber and plastics industry (RPI) on sustainable innovation activities. It will show that many sustainable innovations are directed at the improvement of technological processes (eco‐efficiency) and to lower costs of production. These innovations can be seen as incremental. Companies with sustainability integrated in their orientation and innovation processes show value creation: the development of products new to the market (radical innovations) and cooperation with stakeholders. The PRIMA project shows that more insight in SME innovative characteristics and (e)valuation of sustainable innovation efforts provides opportunities to improve the sustainability performance of SMEs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Board of director attributes: effects on financial performance in SMEs

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This paper analyses the relationship between board of director (BoD) attributes and financial performance in small and medium-sized...     

Traditional SMEs and innovation: the role of the industrial policy in Italy

The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it analyses the Italian aid programmes for innovation and technology and, in particular, the role of the regions in view of the recent legislative framework. The second aim is to match the needs of Italian SMEs for technological innovation with the state and regional aid programmes. Two empirical research programmes carried out at Ceris-CNR (Institute of Economic Research on Firms and Growth - Italian National Research Council) confirmed that the Italian SMEs' approach to innovation tends to meet the demand of the existing market through incremental processes. The most common way of introducing new technology is by purchasing new machines and equipment to reduce costs and improve quality. All industrialized countries tend to favour the linking of SMEs with external sources of knowledge. The paper shows that in Italy such a policy clashes with the capacity of SMEs for absorbing innovation. Most of them lack the technical structures (technical office, design department, R&D laboratory, prototype department, etc.) and the graduate staff capable of interacting with the research bodies.     

A remark on economic response to technological innovation

In this article differential techniques are applied to a two-sector equilibrium model of economic response to technological innovation. These techniques allow a parametric comparative statics interpretation of the model, and qualitative results on the directions of parameter shifts are obtained.     

基于物元模型的中小企业技术创新能力综合评估

分析概括了企业技术创新能力的内涵及其特征,应用系统工程理论方法,设计了中小企业技术创新能力评价指标体系。在此基础上,运用物元理论建立了中小企业技术创新能力评价物元模型,进而将模型应用于实际问题,以上海3家企业技术创新能力为物元,对其技术创新能力进行了综合评价与分析,得到了3家企业技术创新能力的初步结论及改进的建议。为中小企业技术创新能力的评价与改进提供了一种科学有效的新方法。