Crafting Firm Competencies to Improve Innovative Performance.

Recent interdisciplinary research suggests that customer and technological competencies have a direct, unconditional effect on firms' innovative performance. This study extends this stream of literature by considering the effect of organizational competencies. Results from a survey-research executed in the fast moving consumer goods industry suggest that firms that craft organizational competencies - such as improving team cohesiveness and providing slack time to foster creativity - do not directly improve their innovative performance. However, those firms that successfully combine customer, technological and organizational competencies will create more innovations that are new to the market.Innovation, Research and Development, Consumer Goods, Product Innovation, Production Management, Personnel Management, Capability Building

Entrepreneurial education and learning at universities: exploring multilevel contingencies

AbstractDespite the worldwide increase in entrepreneurship education offered at universities, there is an ongoing debate whether and under which conditions this type of education contributes to students' entrepreneurial learning. Building on human capital theory, we hypothesize that the exposure to various entrepreneurship education initiatives has an inverted U-shaped relationship with entrepreneurial learning outcomes. We also argue that this relationship is moderated by the entrepreneurial experience of the students, the teaching pedagogy applied in entrepreneurial initiatives offered at the university and the prevalence of opportunity-driven entrepreneurship in the country. A multi-level analysis on a cross-country sample of 87,918 students resulting from GUESSS ('Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students' Survey') strongly confirms our hypotheses, and allows us to discuss implications for researchers, educators and policy makers with respect to the nature of entrepreneurial learning, the desi..

A Comprehensive User Modeling Framework and a Recommender System for Personalizing Well-Being Related Behavior Change Interventions: Development and Evaluation

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Exploring Antecedents of Service Innovation Excellence in Manufacturing SMEs

In this paper, we discuss factors that enable SMEs to achieve service innovation excellence. Using a knowledge based-perspective, we posit that absorptive capacity, which is the ability to identify, assimilate and exploit external knowledge, is one of these critical factors. Additionally, we investigate the effect of two potential drivers that can influence absorptive capacity, namely employee collaboration and an SME’s search breadth

Trading patients’ choice in providers for quality of maternity care? A discrete choice experiment amongst pregnant women

Background The introduction of bundled payment for maternity care, aimed at improving the quality of maternity care, may affect pregnant women’s choice in providers of maternity care. This paper describes a Dutch study which examined pregnant women’s preferences when choosing a maternity care provider. The study focused on factors that enhance the quality of maternity care versus (restricted) provider choice. Methods A discrete choice experiment was conducted amongst 611 pregnant women living in the Netherlands using an online questionnaire. The data were analysed with Latent Class Analyses. The outcome measure consisted of stated preferences in the discrete choice experiment. Included factors were: information exchange by care providers through electronic medical records, information provided by midwife, information provided by friends, freedom to choose maternity care provider and travel distance. Results Four different preference structures were found. In two of those structures, respondents found aspects of the maternity care related to quality of care more important than being able to choose a provider (provider choice). In the two other preference structures, respondents found provider choice more important than aspects related to quality of maternity care. Conclusions In a country with presumed high-quality maternity care like the Netherlands, about half of pregnant women prefer being able to choose their maternity care provider over organisational factors that might imply better quality of care. A comparable amount of women find quality-related aspects most important when choosing a maternity care provider and are willing to accept limitations in their choice of provider. These insights are relevant for policy makers in order to be able to design a bundled payment model which justify the preferences of all pregnant women