Search results

This paper aims to discover the key elements for generating and protecting innovations based on the customer-supplier relationship in industrial sectors.

This exploratory qualitative study was performed using semi-structured interviews with chief executive officers and innovation managers of 22 industrial firms and institutions from the machine-tool industry.

Key forms of knowledge must be shared by the two agents. Producers have to obtain in-depth knowledge about customers’ needs and customers need knowledge on producer’s absorptive capacity. Producers distinguish between three types of customers: reference customers, necessary for innovations with greatest scope, clientes amigos or test users, required to test innovations currently being developed, and traditional customers, associated with incremental innovations. The traditional means of protecting innovations is a detailed contract between customer and supplier; and patents are used for innovations of greater technological scope, as a form of defense against third-party patents and as a signaling element of absorptive capacity.

The paper draws on the direct experience of executives from companies whose innovation is based on a close relationship with customers to answer questions to which the literature has yet to provide definitive answers: What sort of information to be shared is relevant for the generation of innovations? Are all customers equal or are there profiles that contribute more effectively to the development of innovations? What attitude and mechanisms are most effective for protecting the knowledge and competitiveness generated through knowledge sharing?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mediating role of contracts and trust on the generation of product innovations stemming from buyer-supplier knowledge-sharing (KS) among the members of the supply chain. Together with the individual effects of trust and contracts, their joint effect is examined in order to determine whether these are complementary or alternative mechanisms of safeguarding and control.

Drawing on a survey of 202 European machine tool firms acting as buyers and sellers, the authors propose and evaluate a structural equation model.

Results confirm that there is a positive relation between contracts and trust with respect to buyer-supplier KS, and of the latter with respect to innovation performance. They also show that firms in which both the levels of trust and contract use are high reinforce their product-innovation capability based on buyer-supplier interaction (complementarity thesis). However, results also show that, contrary to trust, contracts by themselves do not act as a stimulus for product innovation.

Establishing contracts seems to be a highly recommended action in a buyer-supplier relationship focused on increasing innovation capacity. This does not go against engendering trust in a relationship. Both trust with a degree of formalization, in different ways, help to increase the effect of sharing valuable knowledge on innovation capacity.

To the authors’ best knowledge, no prior study has delved into differentiating the use of contracts and trust as mechanisms in mediating the effect originated from knowledge-sharing on product innovation performance with two different samples formed by buying and selling firms.

This paper aims to investigate how the implementation of the inter-cooperation principle among Spanish machine-tool cooperatives helps them to coopete–collaborate with competitors, in their innovation and internationalization processes and achieve collaborative advantages.

The paper uses a multi-case approach based on interviews with 15 CEOs and research and development (R&D) managers, representing 14 Spanish machine tool firms and institutions. Eight of these organizations are worker-cooperatives.

Worker-cooperatives achieve advantages on innovation and internationalization via inter-cooperation (shared R&D units, joint sales offices, joint after-sale services, knowledge exchange and relocation of key R&D technicians and managers). Several mutual bonds and ties among cooperatives help to overcome the risk of opportunistic behaviour and knowledge leakage associated to coopetition. The obtained results give some clues explaining to what extent and under which conditions coopetitive strategies of cooperatives are transferable to other types of ownership arrangements across sectors.

Firms seeking cooperation with competitors in their R&D and internationalization processes can learn from the coopetitive arrangements analyzed in the paper.

Findings can be valuable for sectoral associations and public bodies trying to promote coopetition and alliances between competitors as a means to benefit from collaborative advantages.

Focussing on an “ideal type” of co-operation–cooperative organizations – and having access to primary sources, the paper shows to what extent (and how) strong coopetitive structures and processes foster innovation and internationalization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of digital competences in relation to the general competences demanded by the job market in the case of Business graduates’ future.

A telephone survey was conducted with 992 team and HR managers from November 15 to December 15, 2016. The selected respondents were chosen from a sampling frame of 4,880 registered members of a professional association of Business and Economics graduates. Only those admitting to have or having had employees under their command were accountable. Thus, the final sample of the analysis comprised a total of 231 respondents. We used partial least square modeling in order to test the hypotheses.

The study carried out in the professional field of graduates in Business studies shows us that of the five dimensions analyzed as digital competences, four of them show an influence on the candidate’s suitability for the post. These are communication, content creation, safety and problem solving. In the variables related to information, this relationship is not observed.

In this research, the authors analyze the digital competences from the perspective of the possible employer. The concept of digital competence is of increasing importance in recent research. There is a need to relate the competences demanded by the companies and those developed by the training centers. Also, prior literature is limited in the number of works analyzing digital competences specifically in the professional activities concerning graduates in Economics of Business studies.

The purpose of this paper is to determine what competences are considered critical for team and human resources (HR) managers when selecting inexperienced Business graduates. Second, the authors aim to find out differences existing among businesses and organizations according to company size, and very particularly, the resources used with respect to the inexperienced graduate personnel selection practices.

To this end, the authors have performed an empirical study consisting of two qualitative data-gathering processes and a survey. First, the authors completed 12 in-depth interviews, followed by three world cafés with HR managers and consultants. Second, a survey was also conducted with 186 experienced Business graduates, team managers or middle-level staff.

The main results support the idea that generic competencies are the ones most appreciated in graduates. Attitudes are among the generic competencies considered most critical in inexperienced Business graduates. In particular, intra-personal, followed by inter-personal attitudes and values, were the most frequently cited and highly valued competencies. In contrast, most of the specific knowledge competences that are required for Business graduates are taken for granted. For its part, the authors found that excelling inexperienced graduates are those who show convincing proofs of holding attitudinal competences, signaled through some experience of international interchange programs, or pre-graduate internships in companies. Also, the authors found that HR managers and consultants show clear differences of preference for a set of competences or another depending on the size of the recruiting company. In particular, generic competences of knowledge, abilities, attitudes and values rate higher among small firms than larger ones.

Finally, the authors give recommendations for faculties and business schools headed to a more intensive development of generic competences, and the learning of skills on how to tailor curricula during studies and how to find jobs.

The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent small sized and periphery-located firms compensate the comparative disadvantages of big centrally located firms, through patent ownership agreements with other agents, notably research institutes.

The authors develop an empirical study of patents from two completely different economic areas, a central and a peripheral one, represented by Germany and Spain, respectively, in the domain of the Key Enabling Technology (KET) of advanced manufacturing technologies in robotics and automation. Comparing the population of 211 Spanish patents granted with a random sample of 500 German patents, from the files of the US Patent and Trademark Office, the authors obtain and test a series of logistic regression functions taking the predicted possibilities to develop patents with more citations, as a proxy for their value.

Whereas big companies from central locations do not obtain more heavily cited patents from sharing their R&D activity with other firms or research institutes, smaller manufacturing firms in peripheral areas, namely, Spain, may find this advantageous. Additionally, patents containing fewer cited articles and citations of previous patents, tend to be cited more frequently. Finally, this same outcome is also observed with patents showing shorter time between the application and grant.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on patent value which examines the KET of advanced manufacturing technologies in robotics and automation, comparing a central to a peripheral geographic environment, and determining the number, diversity and size of patent assignees. The results prove relevant in general for manufacturing businesses, especially in the Machine-Tool and machinery producing industry. Overwhelmingly, these firms tend to be SMEs basing their marketing activity entirely on a Business-to-Business (B2B) focus, and facing serious obstacles for R&D activity.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of three types of embedded ties, namely, specialized complementary resources, idiosyncratic investments and knowledge sharing, on the innovation capacity of firms. It also examines the particularities of the machine-tool industry.

The evaluation of the embedded buyer-supplier ties is based on the potential sources of relational rents proposed by Dyer and Singh (1998). It also draws on Uzzi and Lancaster (2003) and Noordhoff et al. (2011), among others, to discuss the positive and negative aspects of embedded ties. Using data from a survey of 202 European machine-tool firms acting as buyers and sellers, the study proposes and evaluates a structural equation model.

Only knowledge-sharing routines exert a significant positive effect on product innovation performance. Neither an increase in idiosyncratic investments nor in complementary resources and capabilities enhances innovation performance. Moreover, knowledge-sharing routines mediate in the effect of idiosyncratic investments on innovation performance.

The machine-tool industry has unique characteristics that make generalization difficult. There is also considerable difficulty associated with testing the interrelations among these embedded ties in greater depth in the long run. It is plausible to consider that these interrelations operate within a gradual process.

This research contributes to a better understanding of the role of embedded ties on innovativeness. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous international empirical research has been published analyzing the mediation effects among specialized complementary resources, idiosyncratic investments and knowledge sharing, and their effects on the innovation capacity of firms.

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze which relational resources and capabilities are determinant in fostering innovations and to what extent these innovations are relevant in achieving superior business results.

The proposed hypotheses are tested in an empirical study carried out on a sample group of 106 Spanish companies from the sub‐industries of machine tool manufacture and manufacturers of machinery for specific industries, operating in a business‐to‐business context. Information was gathered by means of telephone interviews with sales, production or management representatives of machinery suppliers. Analysis of data was performed by means of partial least squares regression. The exchange of knowledge leading to shared learning, investments in idiosyncratic or relation‐specific assets, non‐specific complementary resources and capabilities, and dyad governance mechanisms are the analyzed factors.

The results confirm that the existence of customer‐supplier relationships, which generally begin from contracts, and are based on trust and resource interdependence, tends to encourage the exchange of knowledge, specialized resources and idiosyncratic investments. It is also observed that the more committed firms are to the relationship, the greater the resulting increase in their innovativeness. In this regard, investment in idiosyncratic assets for the customer‐supplier relationship is seen to be a more effective practice for improving the supplier's innovativeness.

Contrary to the majority of empirical studies focused on distinguishing resources and capabilities within the firm, this paper defines and recognises some of those which lie in the realm of the dyad. Also, it studies the role from governance mechanisms of the relationship acting both as a joint capability by itself, as well as an antecedent of the other previously mentioned capabilities.