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on Economics of Strategic Management |
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Issue of 2020‒08‒24
fifteen papers chosen by João José de Matos Ferreira Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Katimertzopoulos, Fotios (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics); Vlados, Charis (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics); Koutroukis, Theodore (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In an era of policy-driven systematic encouragement of local innovation processes, the concept of regional innovation systems has been arisen to produce, promote and cultivate the region’s competitive advantage. The key reason for developing specific targeted policy measures within the regional innovation context is to focus on improving local business capacity, competitiveness and performance, including its business ecosystem. From this point of view, it is of crucial importance to promote interactions between different innovative actors who have good reasons to intersect, such as interactions between companies and universities or research institutes, or between small start-ups and larger businesses. These interactions may include interactive local learning and productive knowledge diffusion but they should also include the wider business community and governance framework. Therefore, this study investigates whether policy strategies could be geared towards the promotion of accessibility "to the development of a regional innovation system" and the "development of local comparative advantages" associated with the specific local resources, mainly in less developed business ecosystems. Prior research studies undertaken in less developed business ecosystems indicate that companies themselves will grow in terms of regional development, mainly through innovating. Therefore, in order for local businesses in less developed ecosystems to lay the foundations for effective innovation they must adapt, improve and grow some essential internal business dimensions and variables, such as strategy, technology and management potential (Stra.Tech.Man. innovation theory). In this respect, the present study suggests the conception, analysis and interference of the mechanism of development in terms of the regional competitiveness web. Overall, this academic paper is a conceptual research (Integrative review) that performs a literature review of several field research in regional innovation systems and less developed local business ecosystems, with the overall objective of identifying those variables (such as strategy, technology and management) that could contribute towards effective business innovation and long-term stable growth. |
| Keywords: | regional innovation system; regional competitiveness web; business ecosystem; less developed business ecosystem; Stra.Tech.Man innovation theory |
| JEL: | L26 L50 R58 |
| Date: | 2020–05–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:duthrp:2020_007&r=all |
| By: | Hanan Morsy (Research Department, African Development Bank); Amira El-Shal (Research Department, African Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | We examine the determinants of innovation and its effect on productivity across 52 emerging and developing economies, comparing African firms to their counterparts elsewhere. We use a generalized structural equation model (GSEM) to estimate the causal links while accounting for endogeneity. Our estimates show that access to finance has the strongest effect on firms' decisions to invest in research and development (R&D) in all countries. And while the drivers of innovation are remarkably similar in developed economies, the keys for African firms are access to external knowledge - largely via information and communications technology (ICT)- and skills development via on-the-job training. Only in Africa is the stand-alone effect of ICT adoption on innovation almost as strong as that of R&D; and the combined effect of firms' access to external knowledge through ICT and foreign-technology adoption and training is more than double that of R&D. Regardless of its content, the effect of employee training on innovation in Africa is double that in emerging markets. Finally, innovation is the key determinant of productivity in all countries, but the evidence is much stronger for product innovation by African firms. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, productivity, R&D, ICT, training, GSEM, latent variable, developing countries, Africa JEL classification: C30, D24, J24, M53, O3, O5 |
| Date: | 2020–06–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:adb:adbwps:2466&r=all |
| By: | Mario Benassi (Department of Economics, Management, and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan); Elena Grinza (Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino); Francesco Rentocchini (Department of Economics, Management, and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan); Laura Rondi (Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino) |
| Abstract: | Drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm, we investigate whether firm performance is related to the accumulated stock of technological knowledge associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), and what contextual factors affect this relationship. We test our research questions on a longitudinal matched patent-firm data set on large firms filing 4IR patents at the European Patent Office (EPO). Our results, which control for a large number of patent- and firmlevel variables as well as firm fixed unobserved heterogeneity, show a significant and economically relevant positive association between the development of 4IR technologies and firm productivity. However, no significant relationship with firm profitability is detected, thereby suggesting that the returns from 4IR technological developments are slow to cash in. We also find that late innovators benefit more from the development of 4IR technological capabilities than early innovators and experience a substantial “boost effect”. We provide empirical support to an explanation of these findings in terms of the ability of late innovators to (i) manage the inherent complexity of the bundle of technologies comprising the 4IR and (ii) exploit profitable downstream applications of the 4IR. |
| Keywords: | Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR); patenting; technology development; firm performance; longitudinal matched patent-firm data |
| JEL: | O33 D24 J24 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sru:ssewps:2020-08&r=all |
| By: | Simplice A. Asongu (Yaounde, Cameroon); John Kuada (Aalborg University, Denmark) |
| Abstract: | Knowledge has emerged as a fundamental driver of economic growth and development by inter alia improving the effectiveness and efficiency of economic projects and boosting the process of finding new avenues of addressing developmental policy syndromes. Recent evidence suggests that Africa is on the threshold of significant and sustainable economic growth if its human and material resources can be effectively mobilised to support the process (Kuada & Mensah, 2017; Asongu & Tchamyou, 2019). Consequently, the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Framework aims to explore and support the extent to which current policies in African countries affect the knowledge development process (and thereby competitiveness) on the continent. A knowledge economy is an economy in which economic prosperity largely depends on the accessibility, quality and quantity of information available, instead of the means of production (Asongu, 2017a, 2017b). This themed issue of Contemporary Social Science-‘Building Knowledge Economies in Africa’ - consists of papers that focus on, but are not limited to, the four dimensions of the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Index. These are: information and communication technology, education, economic incentives and institutional regime, and innovation (Tchamyou, 2017). The themed issue engages with high quality contributions which, taken together, address the drivers towards knowledge-based economies. This introduction provides a context for understanding the importance of building knowledge economies in Africa and summarises the main contributions to the themed issue. The paper ends by advising scholars and policy makers regarding the risks associated with a colonial view of knowledge- notably the importance of proposing knowledge-based policies while avoiding hegemonic paradigms and hierarchical constructs. In summary, the issue consists of a set of theoretically informed, empirically robust, policy-relevant and accessible articles for both specialists and non-specialists. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge economy; Development; Africa |
| JEL: | O10 O30 O38 O55 O57 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abh:wpaper:20/002&r=all |
| By: | Vlados, Charis (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics); Chatzinikolaou, Dimos (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Competitiveness and industrial policy seem to play a critical role in the development and mutation of different spatialized socio-economic systems. This article aims to review the literature on these two concepts and suggest a novel theoretical framework. First, we identify that, in the relevant literature, industrial policy acquires progressively a repositioned content, described as a new, holistic, multidimensional, or integrated policy that can help create and sustain the competitiveness of the firms, industries, localities, nations, or other socio-economic agglomerations. In this context, we explore the form of an actual integrated industrial policy and propose the theoretical framework of the competitiveness web, in which the co-evolution of micro-meso-macro levels are explored, by placing the dynamics of business innovation at the dialectic center of the overall developmental process. This integrated industrial policy to strengthen competitiveness must also be able to promote innovation in the different local and regional ecosystems and, therefore, we conceive a policy mechanism in the form of the Institutes of Local Development and Innovation (ILDI). The primary purpose of these institutes is to diagnose and strengthen the Stra.Tech.Man physiology (strategy-technology-management synthesis) of the local socio-economic organizations. We believe that this new approach to the integrated industrial policy to strengthen the local competitiveness can contribute to facilitating the adaptation of the socio-economic systems, and especially the less dynamic and developed, to the new emerging challenges of the crisis and restructuring of globalization in the pandemic era. |
| Keywords: | Competitiveness and Industrial Policy; Multilevel Competitiveness; Integrated Industrial Policy; Socio-Economic Development; Competitiveness Web; Institutes of Local Development and Innovation |
| JEL: | B52 F63 L52 |
| Date: | 2020–06–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:duthrp:2020_010&r=all |
| By: | Piątkowski, Marcin J. |
| Abstract: | The European Union sees the role of innovations as measurably influencing the improvement of social and economic development in the regions of its member states. Actions that promote the implementation of innovations in the SME sector as one of the elements having a positive impact on the European Union's cohesion policy have a special role in supporting enterprises. Therefore, the EU operational programmes dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises are a valuable source of external financing for innovations in these entities. The implementation of innovative investment projects positively influences the development of enterprises. A company resistant to implementing innovations may lose its competitive position on the market and slow down its development. The aim of this article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the implementation of innovative investments between the enterprises that received financial assistance from the European Union in relation to the enterprises that implemented innovations using other sources of financing. The study shows that enterprises covered by financial support from operational programmes have a higher level of innovative investments than other economic entities. Companies receiving EU aid are more often implementing production innovations among all four types of innovations as compared to other enterprises. In addition, it was found that in the lack of financial support from the EU, almost half of the companies would not be able to implement innovations as such. Therefore, the issue of innovations implemented in enterprises with the use of the EU financial aid should be considered as a currently relevant topic and an extremely important one from the standpoint of entrepreneurship development. This study should be considered unique, as there are no studies, to the best of the author's knowledge, containing comparative analyses in this area. |
| Keywords: | implementing innovation; investments; enterprises; entrepreneurship; SMEs; EU subsidies; operational programmes; Poland; Małopolska region; comparative analysis; competitive advantage; financial support |
| JEL: | D92 L20 M21 O33 O39 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:101883&r=all |
| By: | Azusa Fujimori (Department of Management, Osaka Seikei University, Japan); Manabu Furuta (Department of Economics, Aichi Gakuin University, Japan); Takahiro Sato (Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University, Japan) |
| Abstract: | This study examines technology diffusion resulting from foreign direct investment (FDI) in the domestic manufacturing sector in India. We employ unit-level panel data (where a unit refers to an enterprise within the manufacturing sector) from 2000 to 2007, covering all medium- and large-size manufacturing enterprises in India, obtained from India's Central Statistics Office. We attempt to empirically capture evidence of FDI technology spillover effects through two key mechanisms: horizontal spillover (technology diffusion within the same industry) and vertical spillover (technology diffusion between foreign firms and their customer or suppliers). Vertical spillover effects can be further divided into backward linkages (technology diffusion from foreign firms to upstream industries), and forward linkages (technology diffusion from foreign firms to downstream industries). In addition, technology diffusion can be the result of both short- and long-term spillover effects. The results of the empirical analyses highlight the presence of short- and long-term horizontal spillover effects, both of which negatively affect the total factor productivity performance of domestic manufacturers. Moreover, we find an inverse relationship between the growth of FDI and total factor productivity in upstream industries in the short term; however, this changes to a positive relationship in the long term. Furthermore, the results show no evidence of FDI spillover effects to downstream sectors. |
| Keywords: | Technology diffusion; Foreign direct investment; Total factor productivity; Backward spillover effect; Manufacturing industries; Unit-Level data |
| JEL: | C81 F21 O53 |
| Date: | 2020–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2020-13&r=all |
| By: | Vlados, Charis (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics); Chatzinikolaou, Dimos (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This article aims to propose an integrated policy framework for competitiveness and entrepreneurship at a unified macro-meso-micro level. The article presents the evolution of the definition of competitiveness and competitiveness policy and focuses next on modern definitions of macro-policies, meso-policies, and micro-policies by presenting their conceptual synthesis based on the literature. Then, by building on the approach of “competitiveness web,” it presents the implications that such an overarching concept can have on the micro-meso-macro level of entrepreneurship strengthening policies. In this context, it leverages the “Stra.Tech.Man” approach to entrepreneurship dynamics, which implies that business innovation derives from the synthesis of the innate spheres of strategy, technology, and management. At the same time, it proposes the micro-meso-level policy of “Local Development and Innovation Institutes” in the overall context of the competitiveness web. The proposed “competitiveness web” policy framework can address the issue of fostering entrepreneurship in today’s environment of globalization because it takes into account all the building blocks of socio-economic systems by describing the general framework of the policies at the micro-meso-macro socioeconomic levels. |
| Keywords: | Competitiveness policy; entrepreneurship policy; socio-economic development; micro-meso-macro; competitiveness web; Stra.Tech.Man approach; Institutes of Local Development and Innovation |
| JEL: | F63 L26 L53 |
| Date: | 2020–03–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:duthrp:2020_006&r=all |
| By: | , arasy alimudin |
| Abstract: | The turbulent and complex business environment demands that an organization keeps updating its business travel map; take a strategic step that focuses the capabilities and commitment of all personnel to realize the organization's ideal future. Innovative companies use a balanced scorecard as a strategic management system that manages corporate strategy on a continuous basis. The Strategy Model using balanced scorecard on the company's electrical distributor is a strategic and operational business plan that is developed through the following steps: 1) description of vision and mission becomes the goal; 2) description of objectives into strategic advice; 3) Strategic description becomes a strategic initiative to achieve strategic objectives; 4) description of strategic initiatives into a program; and 5) a description into the budget program. The goal to be achieved in this research is to know the performance on the company's electrical distributor in improving profitability. The Balanced Scorecard analysis in the firm found that the financial perspective score 5, the Customer Perspective 3.08, the Internal Business Process Perspective of 3.04, and the Learning and Growth Perspective 2.7. Based on the results of the company score then determine the strategy to increase sales volume by increasing customer satisfaction through quality products with competitive prices, and increase the number of stock items. Optimizing the profit earned, so as to increase the company's ability to return capital to shareholders, by limiting the cost to the owner's personal needs. |
| Date: | 2020–07–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:sk6gx&r=all |
| By: | Julio Elías; Gustavo Ferro; Álvaro García |
| Abstract: | We study innovation and knowledge generation in the quality wine industry in Argentina. The approach followed provides a useful framework to understand innovation at the market and the individual innovator level. We show that the wine quality revolution in Argentina was driven by economic incentives. Wine producers seek for quality as a differentiation mechanism that allows them to appropriate, at least partially, of the return to innovation. We also show that the quality wine revolution of Argentina, involved a series of experimental and rapid conceptual innovations. All the former produced a radical change in the wine industry of Argentina. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Wine industry, Argentina |
| JEL: | O31 Q13 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aep:anales:4135&r=all |
| By: | Komarov, Vladimir (Комаров, Владимир) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Akimova, Varvara (Акимова, Варвара) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Moskvitina, Natalia (Москвитина, Наталья) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Voloshinskaya, Anna (Волошинская, Анна) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) |
| Abstract: | It is shown that the theoretical concepts that underlie the methods of strategy development in Russia and abroad differ significantly. In Russia, the methodological approach to the development of strategies is based on increasing the competitiveness of the territory and is aimed at ensuring economic growth, in foreign countries — on the priority of increasing the quality of life and ensuring sustainable development in the long term. The paper proposes recommendations as to how the process of strategic planning in Russia and its end result might be improved. |
| Date: | 2020–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rnp:wpaper:042021&r=all |
| By: | Vlados, Charis (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics); Chatzinikolaou, Dimos (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Competitiveness is a field of discord and controversies among economists from the very first moment it appeared in the theory and practice of economic policy. This article aims to identify how the concept of competitiveness evolves and find out possible points of convergence, divergence, and synthesis in contemporary scientific dialogue. It first presents older and recent approaches to competitiveness by identifying potential conceptual enrichments and reorientations at the meso-level of analysis. It finds that the rediscovery and deepening into the meso-economic approaches, which connect the micro and macro-economic levels of analysis dynamically, have the potential to offer new analytical content and interpretive potential on competitiveness. Growth poles, industrial districts, and innovation environments constitute such meso-level approaches. In conclusion, we propose a multilevel synthesis of competitiveness and an integrated form of industrial policy in the scheme of “competitiveness web” and “co-opetitiveness pole.” |
| Keywords: | Competitiveness; Micro-meso-macro analysis; Growth poles; Industrial districts; Innovation environment; Competitiveness web; Co-opetitiveness pole |
| JEL: | B52 L52 |
| Date: | 2020–04–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:duthrp:2020_011&r=all |
| By: | Karsten Staehr |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether various measures of capacity pressure or available production capacity may help predict the dynamics of exports from the EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The analysis uses annual panel data for the 11 countries from 2001 to 2019. Reduced form estimations reveal that cost competitiveness measures have little or no predictive power. The measures of capacity pressure comprise capacity utilisation in industry, the unemployment rate and the output gap, and the measures are all robust predictors of future export dynamics. The results are robust to various changes in the time and country sample, control variables and specification, and also hold in panel vector autoregressive models |
| Keywords: | export, competitiveness, capacity utilisation, output gap, unemployment, Central and Eastern Europe |
| JEL: | F14 F17 E32 |
| Date: | 2020–08–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eea:boewps:wp2020-4&r=all |
| By: | Vlados, Charis (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics); Chatzinikolaou, Dimos (Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The concept of competitiveness and the practice of industrial policy seem to acquire a repositioned meaning and new interest today. We explore how the concept of competitiveness is changing shape and scope and what is the focus of industrial policy both historically and recently in the effort of finding their theoretical convergences and divergences. The findings suggest a move towards an industrial policy that is systemic and integrated since it focuses on enhancing the multilevel competitiveness of the socio-economic system in a unified micro-meso-macro approach. A counter-proposed analysis of the “competitiveness web,” which perceives at the centre of the system the evolutionary micro-dynamics of the firm surrounded by co-evolving meso-dynamics and macro-economic and macro-social environments, enhances our understanding towards an “organic” industrial policy that focuses on strengthening the multi-level competitiveness. |
| Keywords: | multilevel competitiveness; integrated industrial policy; business dynamics; socio-economic development; micro-meso-macro analysis; competitiveness web |
| JEL: | B52 F63 L52 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:duthrp:2020_003&r=all |
| By: | Daniel Baumgarten; Michael Irlacher; Karin Mayr-Dorn |
| Abstract: | High-performance frrms typically have two features in common: i) they produce in more than one country and ii) they produce more than one product. In this paper, we analyze the internationalization strategies of multi-product frrms at the product-level. We find that the most productive frrms sell core varieties via foreign direct investment (FDI) and export products with intermediate productivity. Shocks to trade costs and technology a ect the endogenous decision to export or produce abroad at the product-level and, in turn, the relative productivity between parents and aliates. |
| Keywords: | Multi-product firms; FDI; exports; exible manufacturing |
| JEL: | F12 F23 L25 L11 |
| Date: | 2020–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jku:econwp:2020-14&r=all |