Organisational capital, firms’ innovation

Transcript:Organisational capital, firms’ innovation:
Organisational capital, firms’ innovation strategies and productivity Rebecca Riley* and Priit Vahter** *National Institute of Economic and Social Research; Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies **University of Tartu, Estonia Productivity and Firm Growth Workshop NIESR 2 July 2014 Acknowledgements: The financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged. The work was part of the programme of the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES), an ESRC-funded Research Centre – grant reference ES/J019135/1. Disclaimer This work contains statistical data which is Crown Copyright; it has been made available by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) through the Secure Data Service (SDS) and has been used by permission. Neither the ONS nor the SDS bear any responsibility for the analysis or interpretation of the data reported here. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates. Substantial performance differentials across firms Within narrowly defined industries and between observationally similar firms (Syverson, JEL 2011) Organisational capital as a driver of performance differentials Schumpeterian entrepreneur drives the innovation process Building absorptive capacity Cohen and Levinthal, 1989 HRM related aspects of management thought to be important for productivity Ichniowski et al., 1997, 2003; Bandiera et al. 2007 Recent studies by Bloom et al. demonstrate a positive association between “best practice” management and firms’ performance Recent management literature demonstrates positive associations between indicators of management and indicators of innovation Laursen & Foss, 2013 Complementarities with other inputs, IT in particular Bloom, Sadun & Van Reenen 2012; Bresnahan et al. 2002; Crespi et al. 2007 Mirrored in the macroeconomic literature on intangibles, with the concept of economic competencies Corrado et al. 2009; Haskel et al. for the UK Background & Motivation (1) Moving beyond the basic concept of human capital or quality adjusted labour in the production function Human capital as an input to the production of other knowledge intensive intangible capital inputs Existing firm-level studies of organisational capital and performance Typically rely on indicator variables Capturing very specific aspects of organisational capital Case study evidence; relative dearth of representative analyses Usually consider productivity as the outcome variable, innovation linkages ignored Causality remains a big issue This paper Studies linkages between organisational capital, innovation and productivity at the level of the firm Using a relatively generic measure of organisational capital Within a relatively standard structural model of innovation and productivity