Managing External Information in Manufacturing Firms: The Impact on Innovation Performance*

Drawing upon a sample of 206 medium‐sized manufacturing firms, this article investigates the extent to which management of external information is associated with innovation performance. The overall purpose of the article is to examine whether or not those organizations that are better at managing external information are also those that are the better innovators. The research strategy used was a survey, and data were collected by means of mail questionnaires (with a 62.4% response rate). A multiple regression analysis was used for hypothesis testing. The results show that scanning the technological sector of the environment was positively associated with innovation performance, while scanning customers, suppliers, and competitors proved to be negatively correlated with innovation performance. Cross‐functional integration in the form of collaboration also proved significantly correlated with innovation performance, while interaction showed no such relationship. Further, decision‐making based on information from the industry environment correlated significantly with innovation performance. Research and managerial implications of these findings are presented and are discussed.     

Factors Affecting New Product Forecasting Accuracy in New Firms

This study identifies factors that seem to influence a new firm's ability to accurately forecast new product sales. William Gartner and Robert Thomas present a conceptual model and develop hypotheses that specify antecedent factors prior to new product launch, such as the founder's expertise and the marketing research methods used, as well as environmental factors occurring after product launch, such as competitive factors and market volatility, that influence new product forecasting accuracy. The hypotheses were tested with data collected from a survey of 113 new U.S. software firms. Some tentative guidelines for improving sales forecast accuracy among new firms are offered. Directions for future research are discussed.     

The Collaboration of Innovation Intermediaries and Manufacturing Firms in the Markets for Technology

Many manufacturing firms have opened up their product innovation processes and actively transfer knowledge with external partners in the markets for technology. However, the markets for technological knowledge have remained inefficient in comparison with the markets for most products. To reduce some of the market inefficiencies, manufacturing firms may collaborate with innovation intermediaries, which are defined as organizations that act as agents or brokers in the innovation process between two or more parties. These innovation intermediaries comprise different service providers ranging from consulting companies to Internet marketplaces for technology. In light of an increasing importance of intermediary services in the context of open innovation, this paper specifically focuses on the collaboration of manufacturing firms and innovation intermediaries, which may be critical for the success of intermediary services. Based on new interview data from 30 innovation intermediaries and 30 European manufacturing firms, this paper examines the question of how innovation intermediaries and manufacturing firms collaborate concerning the following issues, which emerged as the key themes from the interviews: potential of intermediation, roles of intermediaries, types of intermediation, drivers of intermediation, complementarity of intermediation, compensation of intermediation, and the importance of repeated collaborations. The findings indicate how manufacturing firms may reduce their transaction costs in technology markets by collaborating with intermediaries. However, intermediary services can only be regarded as a complement rather than a substitute of manufacturing firms' internal activities of managing technology transfer. Thus, manufacturing firms need sufficient internal capabilities for managing technology transfer, such as absorptive capacity and desorptive capacity.     

网络嵌入影响企业创新绩效的概念模型与实证分析

本文有效整合社会网络、知识获取和创新绩效三个方面的理论研究,以知识获取为中间变量,构建网络嵌入影响企业创新绩效的概念模型,探究关系型嵌入和结构型嵌入影响企业外部知识获取并进而影响创新绩效的微观机理,并通过长三角地区270家本土企业的问卷调查与结构方程模型分析,结果发现:企业通过对组织网络的关系型嵌入和结构型嵌入能够有效提高外部知识的获取效应,从而对企业的创新绩效存在显著的推动作用。在此基础上,本研究试图为本土企业如何通过网络嵌入提高知识获取能力以及创新绩效提供理论指导和对策建议。     

Comparison of Organization Communication Effectiveness on Construction Firms and Manufacturing Firms

基于用先进的制造业改造传统建筑业的现实需求,在对影响组织沟通的核心要素分析的基础上,设计问卷及测量问题,并进行了数据收集及其信度、效度检验,应用数理统计方法对建筑业和制造业企业的组织沟通有效性进行了比较研究.研究结果表明:制造业企业信息交流的准确性、及时性和充分性均明显好于建筑业企业;而制造业企业的信息交换量虽大于建筑业企业,但差异并不显著.该研究有助于建筑业企业借鉴制造业的先进经验,通过组织沟通有效性水平的提升促进与其他联盟企业的合作.     

我国内迁出口企业经营绩效的影响因素研究

本文依据包括中国工业企业数据库在内的多层面的数据,筛选了从我国沿海省市内迁的制造业出口企业,分析了这些企业迁移后在内陆地区经营绩效的影响因素.计量检验结果表明,对内迁出口企业的经营绩效有明显影响的包括迁移距离、本省基础设施、中间投入占比、企业规模、区域地理特征与政策支持等因素;不同行业内迁出口企业的经营绩效及其影响因素有明显差别;没有发现至出海口距离有明显影响.     

The Locus of Innovation: The Effect of a Separate Innovation Unit on Exploration,Exploitation, and Ambidexterity in Manufacturing and Service Firms

This paper investigates the effects of having a separate innovation unit on exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity in manufacturing and service firms according to traditional paradigms of the innovation management discipline that innovation units should be organized in a separate department. Many manufacturing firms have such a unit while few service firms do. This paper sets out to investigate the advantages of having such a unit for exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity, and whether there are differences between manufacturing and service firms that could help explain why such units are present or absent. The literature suggests that a separate innovation unit has a positive effect on exploration and ambidexterity in manufacturing firms. However, the effect on improving operational activities, that is, exploitation, is unclear. If exploration and exploitation are two ends of a continuum, as the literature suggests, more exploration comes at the cost of exploitation. On the other hand, others have suggested the possibility of an orthogonal relationship, where a separate unit can simultaneously enhance exploration and exploitation. In this paper, the Dutch Community Innovation Survey (CIS) is used to investigate these relationships for manufacturing and service firms, with a question added to the survey regarding the locus of innovation within each firm, that is, mostly within a dedicated innovation unit or dispersed throughout the firm. Our findings show that a separate innovation unit increases exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity in both manufacturing and service firms. It thereby provides support for the orthogonal view of ambidexterity. A separate unit enhances the ability to exploit and be ambidextrous equally in service and manufacturing firms, but has a weaker positive effect on exploration, and exploratory and ambidextrous performance in service firms. This finding implies that both manufacturing and service firms benefit from having a separate innovation unit, with the advantages being greatest for manufacturing firms. In service firms, such an innovation unit alone may not be sufficient, as such units are expensive to maintain, while they contribute less to ambidextrous performance than in manufacturing firms. Based on the latter finding, future studies should make a distinction between the ability to be ambidextrous in creating exploratory and exploitative innovations, and ambidextrous performance, the ability to gain financially from engaging in both types of activities simultaneously.     

Technology Acquisition in Family and Nonfamily Firms: A Longitudinal Analysis of Spanish Manufacturing Firms

Technology acquisition from external sources has been identified as a critical competence for sustained success in innovation, and research has paid a good deal of attention to studying its advantages, drawbacks, determinants, and outcomes. Traditionally, research has modeled the choice to acquire technology from outside a firm's boundaries as the result of a trade‐off between the benefits of external acquisition (e.g., higher return on investment, lower costs, increased flexibility, access to specialized skill sets, and creativity) and its drawbacks (e.g., opening the market to new entrants, risk of imitation of core competencies, and reduced value appropriability). Yet, this view does not capture the behavioral considerations that may potentially encourage or discourage managers from sourcing technology outside the firm's boundaries. This behavioral aspect is especially important if one wants to understand the conduct in external technology acquisition of family firms, which are found to favor strategic actions that preserve the controlling families' control and authority over business, even at the cost of giving up potential economic benefits. Thus, external technology acquisition is likely to be interpreted differently in family and nonfamily firms. Despite its importance, how the involvement of a controlling family affects decisions in technology and innovation management and specifically external technology acquisition is an overlooked topic in extant research and requires further theoretical and empirical examination. This study attempts to fill these gaps by extending the tenets of the behavioral agency model and prior research pointing to particularistic decision‐making in family firms to uncover the behavioral drivers of external technology acquisition in family and nonfamily firms. Theory is developed that relates performance risk, family management, and the contingent effect of the degree of technology protection on external technology acquisition, and the hypotheses are tested with longitudinal data on 1540 private Spanish manufacturing firms. The analyses show that managers are more likely to acquire technology from external sources through research and development contracting when firm performance falls below managers' aspirations. Family firms are generally more reluctant to acquire external technology, and the effect of negative aspiration performance gaps becomes less relevant as family management is higher, which is attributed to family managers' attempts to avoid losing control over the trajectory that technology follows over time. However, family firms become more favorable to considering the adoption of an open approach to technology development when some protection mechanisms (specifically, the filing of patents on the firm proprietary technologies) increase the managers' perceptions of control over the technology trajectory. As such, this study makes a contribution to the understanding of the behavioral factors driving external technology acquisition, and it offers important insights regarding technology strategy in family firms.     

Design Reuse in Manufacturing and Services*

Most professionals, actively engaged in design, live in a world of trade‐offs. The most typical compromise is that reducing the cost of design causes quality to suffer, but there are many others as well. This paper summarizes current use of one of the most popular approaches to improving the new offering development process: design reuse. In the present study 42 companies were surveyed, of which 23 were in manufacturing and 19 were in services—but all were actively engaged in technology and design reuse in new offerings. It was hypothesized that policies for design reuse and internal sourcing would promote the complexity and breadth of reuse (here the combination of modular and architectural substitution), which, in turn would dampen the percentage of substitution and reduce the negative impact on innovativeness of new offerings. These predictions were generally supported. Adoption of policies for encouragement or to mandate design reuse were significantly correlated with the extent of reuse (application of both architectural and modular design vs. just one or the other) among manufacturers but not services firms in the sample. Internal sourcing of ideas for design reuse was significantly correlated with extent of reuse for the total sample, and especially for services. Design reuse percentage and extent of design reuse were significantly and inversely associated for manufacturing, as predicted, but not for services. Novelty of new offerings was significantly and inversely related to percentage of reuse, as predicted, for manufacturing, but not for services. It was found that sector also makes a difference in likelihood of adopting higher levels of reuse with service company respondents reporting significantly higher levels (average of 42% reuse for services and 28% for manufacturing applications). Perhaps one of the most interesting preliminary findings to emerge was that the tipping point of negative impact from design reuse percentage on innovativeness for all firms in the sample of new offerings was 43%, beyond which novelty suffers. For manufacturing, the tipping point was lower: Novelty begins to suffer after 33% design reuse, which has important management implications. The conclusion was drawn, based on these preliminary results, that much can be done to relieve some of the negative consequences of the typical trade‐offs commonly encountered in development programs for new offerings, especially when cost, timing, and innovation are the target goals. However, services and manufacturing are quite different in their approach to design reuse and substitution. Further development of the concept of design reuse strategy appears to be warranted based on these preliminary findings. The findings raise the distinct possibility that mesolevel strategic aggregation issues might lead research into areas that help explain how complex systems realize their full self‐organizing potential and why corporate strategy considerations, alone, have failed to explain the success and failure of organizations coping in rugged landscapes.     

Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Productivity in Japanese Manufacturing Firms

By using a large new enterprise-level data set, and evidence drawn from case studies, we show that Japanese employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are a pervasive and neglected institution. In 1988, more than 90% of all firms listed on Japanese stock markets had an ESOP, and close to 50% of the labour force in firms with ESOPs participated in the plan. Micro data and a production function framework are used to examine the effects on business performance of ESOPs. On average, the net effect of introducing an ESOP is to increase productivity by almost 7%.     

The Determinants of Survival of Spanish Manufacturing Firms

This paper analyses the factors determining Spanish manufacturing firms survival–and exit. The data are drawn from the survey Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales for the period 1990–1999. The methodology includes both non-parametric techniques and the estimation of a Cox proportional hazards model (CPHM). Our results suggest that the probability of exit is higher for small firms and also for young and mature firms. Furthermore, exporting firms and firms performing R&D activities enjoy better survival prospects.     

Beyond the High‐Performance Paradigm: Exploring the Curvilinear Relationship between High‐Performance Work Systems and Organizational Performance in Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms

In this study, we explore the potential downside of the ‘high‐performance’ paradigm by examining the curvilinear relationship between high‐performance work systems (HPWS) and organizational performance and the moderating effects of the industry type. Using data from Taiwanese manufacturing firms, we find an inverted‐U pattern between HPWS and organizational performance in high‐technology firms (N = 74), and a linear relationship in traditional manufacturing firms (N = 86). These findings are consistent with the viewpoint of diminishing returns of HPWS and the contingency perspective. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.     

我国二氧化碳排放绩效的动态变化、区域差异及影响因素

本文利用含有非期望产出的DEA模型构建了可用于研究二氧化碳排放绩效动态变化的Malmquist指数,以此为基础,测度了1996—2007年我国28个省区市二氧化碳的排放绩效,并借助收敛理论和面板数据回归模型分析区域差异及其影响因素。研究发现:样本期间我国二氧化碳排放绩效主要因技术进步而不断提高,平均改善率为3.25%,累计改善为40.86%;四大区域的二氧化碳排放绩效有所差异,东部最高,东北和中部稍低,西部较为落后,但差异性有下降趋势,二氧化碳排放绩效存在收敛性;全国范围内,经济发展水平、产业结构高级化程度、能源强度和所有制结构对二氧化碳排放绩效有显著影响,对外开放的影响则不明显。     

Geroski's Stylized Facts and Mobility of Large German Manufacturing Firms

Paul Geroski has established two stylized facts with respect to theprevalence of differential changes (mobility) of indicators ofeconomic and technological performance: technologicalindicators show a larger amount of mobility than do economic indicators.We assess the two stylized facts for a sample of 392 large Germanfirms observed over the period 1981–1993 and assigned to elevenmanufacturing industries. We analyze these data with two novelmethods, Salter curves and mobility indices based on fractileMarkov chains. Our analysis supports Geroski's two stylized factsin the case of large German manufacturing firms taking account ofsectoral differences.     

Innovation and the Survival of New Firms in the UK

This paper analyzes the survival over the subsequent 5-year period of the complete cohort of nearly 162,000 limited companies that incorporated in Britain in 2001. The paper focuses on the relationship between innovation and survival at the firm-level. The data available allow us to look at the intellectual property (IP) activity of all British firms, including that of the cohort of new firms in 2001. The results indicate that IP activity, measured as patenting and trade-marking, is associated with a considerably lower probability of exit. We also find substantial differences in survival probabilities across sectors. In some sectors patenting is associated with a lower probability of exit; however, trade-marking is associated with lower probability in almost all sectors.     

产业链定位、分工与集聚如何影响企业创新——基于江苏省制造业企业问卷调查的实证研究

本文利用对江苏省342家制造业企业的调查问卷实证研究了产业链定位、分工和集聚效应对于企业创新强度的影响,结果发现:处于产业链终端环节企业并没有表现出特定的创新优势,一定程度上反映出我国制造业产业链中的终端集成环节并未形成相应市场势力或集成创新能力;分工活动(以供应商数量作为度量指标)与创新强度之间呈现较为复杂的U型非线性关系;集聚效应并未对我国微观企业创新活动产生积极影响,未成为激发集群创新动力的有机载体。针对以上实证结果,基于我国经济转型背景和企业微观层面行为特征,我们就产业链定位、分工与集聚效应三个因素与我国制造业企业创新活动的内在关系与作用机理,结合统计性分析进一步进行了剖析和解释,并据此提出了相应的可行对策思路。     

Importing and Productivity: An Analysis of South African Manufacturing Firms

Review of Industrial Organization - This paper uses firm-level data from company tax declarations to analyse the complementary relationship between direct access to imported intermediate inputs and...