Determinants of technology licensing: the case of licensors

This paper empirically analyzes the behavior of technology licensors using a large dataset of US‐traded companies. The stock of technological knowledge of the licensor, this company's prior exposure to licensing, the rate of growth of its primary sector, the strength of IPR protection, and the nature of the technology are found to be important determinants of the propensity to sell technology through nonexclusive licenses. Smaller firms in industries with ‘simpler’ technologies tend to sell technology through exclusive licenses more than others. In contrast, larger firms in industries dealing with more ‘complex’ technologies engage relatively more in cross licensing. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Innovation in NTBFs: Does leadership really matter?

Innovation is considered to be a key contributor to both the long-term survival and development of superior competitiveness in New Technology-based Firms [NTBFs]. Many factors contribute to a firm’s differential innovation performance. According to the resource-based view of the firm, leadership is one of the key contributory resources. In this article, the relationship between innovation, leadership and performance is examined through a study of 194 NTBFs. The results suggest that the level of innovation, the likelihood of success and the development of the competences needed for effective innovation are influenced by the firm’s leadership style. In particular, it was found that the transformational/human resources leadership style is more conducive to innovation and the introduction of new products, whereas transactional leadership tends to be associated with the modification of existing products. The findings outline the attributes of each leadership style associated with innovation and provide practical guidelines to enable senior managers to consider leadership in the formulation and deployment of their innovation plan. Finally, the analysis indicates the need to consider and align leadership and approaches to innovation in order to achieve sustainable competitive performance.     

Why HR policies fail to support workplace learning: the complexities of policy implementation in healthcare

An appropriate human resource policy infrastructure to support workplace learning has been advocated both within the literature on workplace learning and in official British Government guidance for healthcare organizations. Yet minimal empirical evidence exists to support the view that HR policies are able to promote greater use of workplace learning methods within organizations. This proposition was tested through collecting both quantitative and qualitative data from staff in British hospices. The findings demonstrated the limited effects of HR policies in this respect and five key factors were identified that appeared to influence HR policy implementation in this instance. These findings have wider significance for our understanding of the complex interrelationships that potentially exist between HR policies, their outcomes and the mediating factors associated with policy implementation.     

Monetary Policy and Macroprudential Policy: New Evidence from a World Panel of Countries

The event of the recent financial crisis raises the question of whether policy makers could have done more or something different to prevent the build‐up of financial imbalances. This paper contributes to the field of regulatory impact by tackling the debate on whether central banks should ‘lean against the wind’, while in case the response is positive, how macroprudential policies should be combined with monetary policy. Using an augmented Taylor rule and a sample of 127 global economies, the results provide evidence on the importance of macroprudential issues for the implementation of an effective monetary policy. They also document that the type of adopted macroprudential instrument has a substantial effect on such effectiveness, with this policy mix being less ‘integrated’ when the monetary rule aims at primarily safeguarding inflation stability. The results survive robustness checks under alternative assets.     

An Examination of New Product Development Best Practice

Efforts continue to identify new product development (NPD) best practices. Examples of recognized studies include those by the Product Development and Management Association's Comparative Performance Assessment Study and the American Productivity Quality Center NPD best practices study. While these studies designate practices that distinguish top‐performing companies, it is unclear whether NPD practitioners as a group (not just researchers) are knowledgeable about what represents a NPD best practice. The importance of this is that it offers insight into how NPD practitioners are translating potential NPD knowledge into actual NPD practice. In other words, are practitioners aware of and able to implement NPD best practices designated by noteworthy studies? The answer to this question ascertains a current state of the field toward understanding NPD best practice and the maturity level of various practices. Answering this question further contributes to our understanding of the diffusion of NPD best practices knowledge by NPD professionals, possibly identifying gaps between prescribed and actual practice. Beginning the empirical examination by conducting a Delphi methodology with 20 leading innovation researchers, the study examined the likely dimensions of NPD and corresponding definitions to validate the NPD practices framework originally proposed by Kahn, Barczak, and Moss. A survey was then conducted with practitioners from the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland to gauge opinions about perceptions of the importance of different NPD dimensions, specific characteristics reflected by each of these dimensions, and the level of NPD practice maturity that these characteristics would represent. The study is therefore unique in that it relies on the opinions of NPD practitioners to see what they perceive as best practice versus prior studies where the researcher has identified and prescribed best practices. Results of the present study find that seven NPD dimensions are recommended, whereas the 2006 Kahn, Barczak, and Moss framework had suggested six dimensions. Among practitioners across the three country contexts, there is consensus on which dimensions are more important, providing evidence that NPD dimensions may be generalizable across Western contexts. Strategy was rated higher than any of the other dimensions followed by research, commercialization, and process. Project climate and metrics were perceived as the lowest in importance. The high weighting on strategy and low weighting on metrics and project climate reinforce previous best practice findings. Regarding the characteristics of each best practice dimension, practitioners appear able to distinguish what constitutes poor versus best practice, but consensus on distinguishing middle range practices are not as clear. The suggested implications of these findings are that managers should emphasize strategy when undertaking NPD efforts and consider the fit of their projects with this strategy. The results further imply that there are clearly some poor practices that managers should avoid and best practices to which managers should ascribe. For academics, the results strongly suggest a need to do a better job of diffusing NPD knowledge and research on best practices. Particular attention by academics to the issues of metrics, project climate, and company culture appears warranted.     

How process improvement efforts can drive organisational innovativeness

In this study, we draw upon literature in technology and innovation management to theorise about how process improvement efforts in organisations can drive the exploratory activity that is generally associated with more radical forms of innovation. We develop a set of propositions on how process improvement efforts might directly and indirectly drive exploration and more radical forms of organisational innovation. These propositions are organised into four categories: (1) ‘Direct’ – how exploratory forms of process improvement can directly drive innovativeness; (2) ‘Resource Capacity’ – how process improvement can increase the resource capacity that drives innovativeness; (3) ‘Knowledge’ – how process improvement efforts can strengthen knowledge resources that drive innovativeness; and (4) ‘Management Vision’ – how process improvement efforts can influence the managerial vision that moderates the effect of process improvement efforts on innovativeness.     

The effects of climatic variation on rice production in Sri Lanka

We study the responsiveness of rice production to climatic variation using a recent pseudo-panel data set from Sri Lanka. Output per farm is modelled as a non-linear function of temperature and rainfall (and other standard controls) using fixed effects regressions. We find that both climatic variables have concave, non-monotonic effects upon production, and that output is close to maximized at current climatic values. This implies that variations in growing conditions are likely to have negative effects upon production. Random simulations are used to model these impacts under various climate change scenarios, and we find that increasing temperatures will adversely affect rice production much more than varying rainfall, although the effects of a small ceteris paribus rise in temperature are positive. As rice production is a key component in economic output for Sri Lanka and other developing countries, our results have implications for food policy and poverty management in the future.     

FOREIGN AID,TERRORISM AND GROWTH: CONDITIONAL EVIDENCE FROM QUANTILE REGRESSION

In this study, we investigate the role of development assistance in reducing a hypothetically negative impact of terrorism on economic growth, using a panel of 78 developing nations with data for the period 1984–2008. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions. Domestic, transnational, unclear and total terrorism dynamics are employed while development assistance measurements comprised bilateral and multilateral aid variables. With regard to the investigated hypothesis, we consistently confirm that: (i) In quantiles where terrorism is found to increase (decrease) economic growth, its interaction with foreign aid decreases (increases) economic growth. (ii) Comparing thresholds of the modifying aid variables for which the hypothesis is either rejected or accepted reveals that higher levels of multilateral (bilateral) aid are needed to reverse the negative effect of total (unclear) terrorism on growth, than the quantity needed to reverse the positive impact of transnational (domestic and total) terrorism(s) on growth. (iii) There is scant evidence of positive net effects. Overall the findings broadly indicate that foreign aid is a necessary but not a sufficient policy tool for completely dampening the effects of terrorism on economic growth.     

Financial development and economic growth nexus: A rejoinder to Tsionas

Tsionas has offered a more revisionist approach to the empirics of the nexus between financial development and economic growth following our paper entitled ‘Financial development and economic growth nexus: A revisionist approach’. In the current note, we engage Tsionas’ approach in tandem with our original finance–growth nexus review. We concur with Tsionas’ approach and reiterate that the debate on the relationship between financial development and economic growth remains a complex terrain both on the theoretical and empirical fronts.     

Customer attitudes of stayers and defectors in B2B services: Are they really different?

Identifying attitudinal differences between stayers and defectors is important in establishing a deeper understanding of customer satisfaction and loyalty research. Both managers and academics often use global customer attitudes, such as customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions, as determinants of customer loyalty. The implicit assumption is that customer satisfaction and/or behavioral intentions are valid, and accurate, predictors of actual loyalty behaviors. This study compares customer attitudes of stayers and defectors in B2B services using respondents (primary decision makers) from a Fortune 100 company. The results show that the commonly used customer metrics of service quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions have some differences between stayers and defectors. However, these metrics are shown to be relatively weak differentiators of actual customer defection. The stayers and defectors are much more similar, than different, on most metrics. The most notable difference is price perceptions, where defectors appear to be more price sensitive than stayers. These findings have significant implications for the design and use of customer-focused research by managers.