Search results

The high uncertainty of technological innovation in megaprojects brings great challenges to the R&D institution and also acts as a trigger for moral hazard. The incentive and supervision are effective means to improve the performance of innovation. The purpose of this paper is to propose appropriate incentive and supervision mechanisms to reduce information asymmetry and improve the efficiency of incentives. Suggestions on technological innovation are put forward to megaprojects management.

According to the principal-agent theory, the research develops incentive models under three states, i.e. information symmetry, information asymmetry and information asymmetry based on supervision mechanism. The Bayesian theory is employed to prove the effectiveness of the novel supervision method based on risk assessment.

The results indicate that under the information asymmetry, the incentive intensity is positively correlated with the social benefits coefficient, and negatively correlated with the patent benefits coefficient. The R&D effort and the owner's incentive intensity decline with the increase of information asymmetry. The supervision of risks can effectively reduce the degree of information asymmetry, and the higher the uncertainty of innovations, the more significant the effect of supervision is. As the supervision intensity increases, the incentive intensity, the R&D effort and the innovation output will increase. In addition, the R&D institutions with high innovation capability, low unit cost of R&D and low risk-aversion are more willing to make efforts to innovate.

This study fills the research gap on incentive and supervision of technological innovation in megaprojects. The externality of innovation benefits is considered in the model. The traditional incentive model is extended through the introduction of supervision. Furthermore, a novel supervision method based on risk assessment is proposed. The results validate the importance of risk management in technological innovation and provide a new insight for project management.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with questions of instability and economic crises, deriving theoretical arguments from Marx's and Schumpeter's works and presenting relevant empirical evidence for the case of the US food manufacturing sector.

The paper attempts to interpret the economic fluctuations in the US food sector and find causal relationships between the crucial variables dictated by Schumpeterian and Marxian theory, such as technological change, output and profitability. In this context, a number of relevant techniques have been used, such as de‐trending, cointegration analysis, white noise tests, periodograms, cross‐correlations and Granger causality tests.

Most economic variables in the food manufacturing sector exhibit a similar pattern characterized by periodicities exhibiting a short‐term cycle, a mid‐term cycle and a long‐term cycle. Also, the economic variables investigated follow patterns which are consistent with the total economy. Furthermore, a relatively rapid transmission of technology in the economy takes place along with bidirectional causality between technology and output/profitability, which can be interpreted as indicating an ambivalent relationship in the flow of cause and effect. These findings give credit to certain aspects of the Schumpeterian and Marxist theories of economic crises, respectively.

This paper contributes to the literature in the following ways: first, it introduces a relevant methodological framework building on Schumpeterian and Marxist insights. Second, it uses several variables to study the economic fluctuations instead of delimiting its analysis, for instance, to industrial output. Third, the results are discussed in a broader political economy context, related to the US economy, as a whole.

Patent citation statistics, used to measure the technological standing of firms and nations, uniquely suggest that the quality of Japanese technological output is superior to that of the USA. This study explores whether there is something in Japanese citation practices which may inflate citation ratings without any underlying technological superiority. Using telecommunications equipment industry patent citation data, suggests that Japanese companies do appear to cross‐cite one another’s patents much more heavily than is the practice among their North American or European competitors.

Performed over a five-year time horizon, this paper aims to analyze the progression rates of technological innovation across 15 sub-provincial Chinese cities. The authors quantify and rate innovation performance, then rank the cities based on a purpose-built index designed to gauge the rate of technological progress.

Using the inferior constraint method, and a variety of national sources of data, the authors construct an innovation index based in part on new product sales revenue, proportion of college students, research and development expenditure of industrial enterprises in relation to gross industrial output value, contract deals in technical markets per capita, hazard-free treatment rate of waste, enterprises with technical development agencies accounts for industrial enterprises, number of high-tech enterprises and invention patent ownership per million population.

The findings provide a methodology for indexing cities, with 15 Chinese provincial cities as examples. Among the top five cities with the highest technological innovation index were Shenzhen, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Wuhan. In the bottom were Shenyang, Changchun, Dalian, Xi’an and Harbin.

This study applied a new model of innovation at the city level for China. Application to other industries (real estate, manufacturing, etc.) and countries will extend boundaries of this model and show its wider applicability.

Companies can use this research and methodology when seeking new investments in high tech and innovative products. Locations offering more hospitable environments should be prioritized ceteris paribus.

One weakness of much of the international business and competitiveness literature is that it often views the country as the primary unit of analysis. In this way, nuanced views of the institutional environments within countries are often overlooked. This paper proposes a measure of regional rates of innovativeness across China.

Despite increasing research on the social nature of entrepreneurial collaboration in the context of alliances, its performance implication has been under debate. The present study tests a theoretical framework to elucidate the mediated relationship between social capital (SC) and research and development (R&D) alliance performance through the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of alliance firms.

Based on the authors’ literature review, SC is conceptualized as the sum of actual and potential assets, including structural, relational and cognitive capital, embedded within the networks of alliance partners. Alliance performance is regarded as a combination of technological performance and business performance, corresponding to the mutual and private benefits of R&D alliances, respectively. This study hypothesizes the potential impact of SC on alliance performance and the mediating role of EO in the relationship.

The results from an analysis of 218 Korean ventures that participated in R&D alliance projects as focal alliance partners show that each SC dimension drives alliance firms to enact EO, which eventually leads to increased performance in technology and business. Specifically, EO contributes to translating the implications of SC for technological performance partially and for business performance completely.

This study links fragmented theoretical perspectives in research, shedding new light on the importance of social nature in the context of R&D alliances, which conditions entrepreneurial collaboration for better alliance performance. The findings suggest that practitioners should adopt an ambidextrous approach to the SC–EO interface at the alliance level, which opens a gateway to achieve greater performance by alliance.

As the primary decision makers, chief executive officers (CEOs) play pivotal roles in firm innovation. However, little is known regarding how CEOs influence the exploitation and exploration paradox. To advance theory and research, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint effects of CEO tenure and CEO–chair duality on a firm’s shifting emphasis between exploitative and exploratory innovation.

This paper takes the approach of a longitudinal sample of 81 US pharmaceutical firms.

As CEOs’ tenure advance, their firms’ percentage of exploitative innovation increases. Furthermore, non-duality (separation of board chair and CEO) further strengthens the positive relationship between CEO tenure and the percentage of exploitative innovation.

This study integrates upper echelons theory and behavioral agency theory to juxtapose the effects of CEOs on technological innovation. This study extends knowledge of strategic leadership and innovation by showing that CEOs influence the balance between exploitative and exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this study also contributes to the corporate governance literature by demonstrating that monitoring vigilance could inhibit capable CEOs from pursuing more exploratory innovation.

Boards of directors should allow CEOs to have greater discretion over innovation, and vigilant monitoring and control may force CEOs to focus less on exploration.

This is one of the few studies that explicitly investigate how CEO influences a firm’s emphasis on exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation.

Little is known about how subsidies enhance both collaborative and opportunistic behaviours within subsidized industry–university partnerships, and how partners' behaviours influence the intellectual capital dynamics within subsidized industry–university. Based on these theoretical foundations, this study expects to understand intellectual capital’s (IC's) contribution as a dynamic or systemic process (inputs?outputs?outcomes) within subsided university–industry partnerships. Especially to contribute to these ongoing academic debates, this paper analyses how collaborative and opportunistic behaviours within industry–university partnerships influence the intellectual capital dynamics (inputs, outputs and outcomes) of the subsidized projects.

By combining two sources of information about 683 Mexican subsidized industry–university partnerships from 2009 to 2016, this study adopted the structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse the effect of collaborative vs opportunistic behaviours in intellectual capital dynamics within subsidized projects.

Our results show three tendencies about the bright/dark side of subsidies within the Mexican industry–university partnerships. The first tendency shows how collaborative behaviours positively influence intellectual capital dynamics within subsidized industry–university partnerships. The second tendency shows how opportunistic behaviours influence intellectual capital impacts (performance) and return to society (job creation). The third tendency shows how initial inputs of subsidized projects generate some expected socio-economic returns that pursued the subsidies (mediation effect of intellectual capital outputs).

This research has three limitations that provide a future research agenda. The main limitations were associated with our sources of information. The first limitation, we did not match subsidized partnerships (focus group) and non-subsidized partnerships (control group). A qualitative analysis should help understand the effect of subsidies on intellectual capital and partnerships' behaviours. The second limitation, our measures of collaborative/opportunistic behaviours as well as intellectual capital dynamics should be improved by balancing traditional and new metrics in future research. The third limitation is that in emerging economies, the quality of institutions could influence the submission/selection of subsidies and generate negative externalities. Future research should control by geographical dispersion and co-location of subsidies.

For enterprise managers, this study offers insights into IC dynamics and behaviours within subsidized industry–university partnerships. The bright side of collaboration behaviours is related to IC's positive impacts on performance and socio-economic returns. The dark side is the IC appropriation behind opportunistic behaviours. Enterprise managers should recognize the relevance of IC management to capture value and reduce costs associated with opportunistic behaviours. For the university community, this study offers potential trends adopted by industry–university partnerships to reinforce universities' innovative transformation processes. Specifically, these trends are related to the legitimization of the university's role in society and contribution to regional development through industry–university partnerships' outcomes. Therefore, university managers should recognize the IC benefits/challenges behind industry–university partnerships.

For policymakers, the study indirectly shows the role of subsidies for generating/reinforcing intellectual capital outcomes within subsidized industry–university partnerships. The bright side allows evaluating the cost-benefit of this government intervention and the returns to priority industries. The dark side allows for understanding the need for implementing mechanisms to control opportunistic behaviours within subsidized partnerships. Accordingly, policymakers should understand the IC opportunity-costs related to industry–university partnerships for achieving the subsidies' aims.

This study contributes to three ongoing academic debates in innovation and management fields. The first debate about how intellectual capital dynamic is stimulated and transferred through the collaborative behaviour within industry–university partnerships in emerging economies. The second debate is about the “dark side” of partnerships stimulated by public programmes in emerging economies. The third debate is about the effectiveness of subsidies on intellectual capital activities/outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of changes in farm economic conditions and macroeconomic trends on US farm capital expenditures between 1996 and 2013.

A synthetic panel is constructed from Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) data. A dynamic system GMM regression model is estimated for farms as a whole and separately within farm typology categories. The use of farm typologies allows for comparison of the relative magnitudes of these estimates across farms by farm sales level and the operator’s primary occupation.

Changes in gross farm income levels, tax depreciation rates, and interest rates have a significant impact on crop farm investment, while changes in output prices, net cash farm income levels, tax depreciation rates, and farm specialization levels have significant impacts on livestock farm capital investment. The relative significance and magnitudes of these impacts differ within farm typologies. Significant differences include a greater responsiveness to change in tax policy variables for residential crop farms, greater responsiveness to changes in output prices and debt to asset ratios for intermediate livestock farms, and larger changes in commercial crop and livestock farm investment given equivalent changes in farm sales or the returns to investment.

These findings are of interest to agricultural economists when constructing farm investment models and employing pseudo panel methods, to those in the agricultural equipment and manufacturing sector when constructing models to manage inventories and plan for production needs across regions and over time, to those involved in drafting tax policy and evaluating the potential impacts of tax changes on agricultural investment, and for those in the agricultural lending sector when designing and executing agricultural capital lending programs.

This study uniquely identifies differences in the level of investment and the magnitude of investment responsiveness to changes in farm economic conditions and macroeconomic trends given differences in income levels and primary operator occupation. In addition, this study is one of the few which utilizes ARMS data to study farm capital investment. Utilizing ARMS data provides a rich panel data set, covering producers across many different crop production types and regions. Finally, employing pseudo panel construction methods contributes to efforts to effectively employ cross-sectional data and dynamic models to study farm behavior across time.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a more robust empirical support for the long established postulation by Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter that human capital and institutions enable Schumpeterian entrepreneurship, which, in turn, facilitates economic growth.

Adopting entrepreneurial orientation (EO) (i.e. innovativeness, proactiveness and risk taking; Mthanti and Ojah, 2017, Research Policy, 46:4, pp. 724-739) as the measure of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship at the macro-level, and using a sample of 93 countries, over 1980-2008, the authors employ system Generalised Method of Moments to investigate institutions and human capital as possible determinants of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship (EO).

The authors find that the human capital-EO nexus is robust across economic development levels. However, there is a cross-country variation in the institutions-EO nexus. In line with theoretical predictions, institutions indeed drive EO in middle-to-high-income countries. However, in low-income countries, building institutions in order to foster EO yields perverse outcomes, which, for us and especially based on deeper analysis, suggest that improving the quality of institutions may not be a necessary precondition for EO/growth policy in low-income countries. Furthermore, the authors find that EO is a highly persistent series, with self-reinforcing network effects, i.e. lofty EO behaviour encourages more lofty EO behaviour.

Drivers of macro EO are erroneously taken as of growth. This empirical analysis corrects the sequencing.

Policy practice must acknowledge macro-EO importantly has both direct and indirect growth effects.

This study is the first to empirically test the theoretical sequence between drivers of growth/EO and economic growth.

Innovations provide a vital stimulus for economic growth. Through innovations, public sector organisations (PSOs) need to grow the economy to provide for the needs of their citizens. The purpose of this study is to identify innovation drivers and barriers in PSOs in Kenya. The paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the antecedents of innovations and to offer insight to PSOs to foster such innovations.

This research was conducted in two PSOs in Kenya. The participants of the present study consisted of a sample of 186 managerial and non-managerial employees. Empirical data were analysed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.

First, the results indicate that drivers of innovation in PSOs are: leadership practices, social factors, technological factors and management practices. Second, the results reveal that poor management practices and over-reliance on existing resources, among others, are barriers to public sector innovation. Third, the study indicates that management practices and leadership practices are factors to consider in overcoming barriers.

As the present study was conducted with a convenience sample of 186 respondents from 2 purposively selected PSOs in Kenya, the extent to which the results could be generalized may be in doubt. However, as the aim of the study was theory testing, the study makes a contribution in this regard rather than doing a representative survey.

The study offers a first-hand insight into public sector innovation from the perspective of a developing country, Kenya, an area that has been neglected by researchers. The present study has implications for theory, practice, research and policy development, mainly in Kenya, but also for comparable situations worldwide.

The present study represents a first attempt to investigate the drivers, barriers, overcoming barriers and outcomes to innovations in a single study of PSOs from a developing nation. The present study provokes both academics and policy makers to rethink approaches to nurture innovations in the public sector.