Capacidad de absorción: antecedentes y resultados

La globalización de los mercados, los rápidos cambios tecnológicos, la reducción del ciclo de vida tecnológico y la creciente agresividad de los competidores han cambiado las reglas del juego en la gestión empresarial

Innovaciones y prácticas organizativas como determinantes de la competitividad

El debate sobre los determinantes de la competitividad y la gran cantidad de intereses surgidos a su alrededor envuelven su estudio de gran complejidad. Sin embargo, la necesidad de conocer sus antecedentes es clave para el bienestar colectivo. Por ello, la competitividad es y ha sido uno de los temas más relevantes tanto para la estrategia de cualquier empresa como desde el punto de vista de la política económica de cualquier país

Huellas cotidianas: una investigación educativa basada en las artes sobre la apropiación del cuerpo y el espacio habitado durante el confinamiento.

This article presents the visual results of an educational research which relates three basic concepts that were fundamental during the period of confinement: the body, the house and the trace of the bodies in the quotidian space.  Through an art education project based on photography, the students of the Social Education degree program of the Faculty of Education Sciences appropriated, during this period of social isolation, their living environment and their bodies through brief artistic actions based on contemporary artistic referents. Such actions oriented them towards the creation of an aesthetic statement about the lived experience and allowed them to experience and express their body, their space and the signs of one in one another from a sensitive point of view. The photographic results were first analyzed using art-based research instruments (series of samples and photo-essays) to develop a visual and meaningful interpretation of the totality. Afterwards, adopting an a/r/tographic perspective, we attempted to generate a new visual discourse by recovering the students' individual experiences and putting them in the teacher's house and body through the use of projection, generating a visual creative flow that begins with the references and ends up in our own skin.Este articulo presenta los resultados visuales de una investigación educativa que pone en relación tres conceptos básicos que fueron fundamentales durante el periodo de confinamiento: el cuerpo, la casa y la huella del cuerpo en el espacio habitado.  Mediante un proyecto de educación artística basado en la fotografía, los alumnos de Grado de Educación Social de la facultad de Ciencias de la Educación se apropiaron, durante este periodo de aislamiento social, su entorno habitado y su cuerpo a partir de acciones artísticas de corta duración basadas en referentes artísticos contemporáneos. Estas les guiaban hacia construir un discurso estético sobre lo vivido y les permitían experimentar y expresar desde lo sensible sobre su cuerpo, su espacio y la huella del uno sobre el otro. Los resultados fotográficos fueron primero analizados mediante instrumentos de investigación basada en artes (series muestras y fotoensayos) para generar una interpretación visual y significativa del conjunto. Y posteriormente se planteó, desde una perspectiva a/r/tografica, construir un nuevo discurso visual recuperando las experiencias individuales del alumnado para situarlas sobre el propio cuerpo del docente y en su hogar mediante el uso de la proyección, generando un flujo creativo visual, que parte del referente y acaba en nuestra piel

Innovation in tourism: Re-conceptualising and measuring the absorptive capacity of the hotel sector

Recent reviews of research on innovation in tourism have highlighted a number of weaknesses in the literature. Among these is the limited theorising and empirical investigation of innovative practices by tourism organisations. This paper responds to these concerns by examining one important dimension of innovation within commercial tourism organisations, namely their ability to acquire, assimilate and utilise external knowledge (absorptive capacity) for competitive advantage. The topic is pertinent because there is evidence to suggest that tourism organisations are particularly dependent on external sources of knowledge when compared with businesses in other sectors. Following a discussion of the conceptual antecedents of absorptive capacity and its dimensions, a validated instrument for its measurement is developed and used to measure the absorptive capacity of the British hotel sector. The results suggest that current conceptions of absorptive capacity have limitations when applied to tourism enterprises. Absorptive capacity is re-conceptualised to overcome these deficiencies. The research and policy implications of the findings are discussed. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

How do financial constraints affect creativity?

This paper investigates the effects of financial constraints on the outcome of different types of creative tasks such as product ideation and product repair. Four experimental studies examine the effect of financial constraints on creativity of the outcome of a product ideation task, and compare the effect of financial constraints with the effect of another type of constraint (i.e., input restrictions) on creativity of products ideated and on the amount of resources invested in the development of the creative solution. Furthermore, these studies explore the type of creative process ignited by financial constraints and analyze the effect of financial constraints in interaction with an individual difference such as novelty seeking, which embraces more remote determinants of creative performance, on the creativity of the outcomes to a product ideation task, as well as on the creativity of the outcomes to a more constrained task such as repairing an existing product. The results suggest that constrained financial resources may be beneficial to creativity. Financial constraints lead to the ideation of more creative products. Yet these products are generated using fewer inputs and a lower budget than products generated in an unconstrained condition. Furthermore, while yielding outcomes as creative as the ones generated under input constraints, financial constraints induce a parsimonious mindset reflected in the use of less costly resources. More interestingly, financial constraints activate a top-down rather than a bottom-up processing strategy in approaching the creative task. Finally, the results show that the effect of financial constraints is stronger for individuals with inherent tendencies toward novelty seeking, because their stock of experiences and perspectives puts them under stress when facing an unconstrained problem space. This interaction effect holds not only for product ideation tasks, but also when the problem space is already constrained in nature, as in the case of repairing a product. These findings, which are quite counterintuitive from the perspective of classic new product development literature, suggest that, at least under certain conditions, the use of financial constraints might constitute a promising approach to foster new ideas' generation, one that leads to more creative outcomes despite using less costly inputs. In addition, our results suggest that, when dealing with a creative task, companies should modulate the adoption of this kind of constraint on the individual characteristics of their employees, specifically on their innate tendency to seek novelty

Complementarity between innovation knowledge sources: Does the innovation performance measure matter?

We analyse complementarity between different knowledge sources (internal, external and/or cooperation) employing a wide range of innovation performance measures (product, process, organizational, and commercial). The empirical study uses 2014 Spanish CIS data and studies complementarities by performing conditional complementarity/substitutability tests. The results show evidence of conditional complementarity in product innovation performance between external and internal knowledge sources in absence of cooperation and of conditional substitute relationship between external and cooperation knowledge sources in presence of internal source. In product and process innovation performance we found a conditional substitute relationship between internal and cooperation sources when external source is used and not used, respectively. This relationship turns to conditional complementarity in organisational innovation in absence of external knowledge source. Therefore, when designing innovation strategy, managers must consider their objectives on a priority basis, since not all the strategies have the same effects on innovation performance

Local enterprise partnerships: Socialisation practices enabling business collective action in regional knowledge networks

This article identifies and theorises the interorganisational socialisation mechanisms that facilitatethe knowledge dynamic capabilities of organisations brought together within the applied contextof a U.K. Local Enterprise Partnership. Focusing on the Sheffield City Region's Creative and Dig-ital Industries Sector Group, the data for this study were messages posted to the Creative andDigital Industries Sector Group's online consultation platform. Data analysis proceeded throughinductive thematic analysis. It is revealed that collaborative workspaces, business networksresources, and pathways to internationalisation are perceived to play an important role in facili-tating interorganisational learning. These knowledge socialisation mechanisms are essential toavoid regional competency traps. The article identifies and discusses knowledge socialisationmechanisms that are perceived to play a key role in transferring knowledge between membersof the regional system of innovation. In identifying and discussing knowledge socialisation mech-anisms, this paper offers knowledge management theorists and practitioners—more specifically,regional knowledge brokers and regional development managers—actionable insight into a rangeof strategies that reinforce social ties and increase the flow of knowledge with a view to improv-ing innovation outcomes

Does incremental and radical innovation performance depend on different types of knowledge accumulation capabilities and organizational size?

While prior studies recognize the importance of knowledge accumulation capabilities in innovation performance, current research has still failed to empirically identify its role with regard to different types of innovation performance. The objective of this paper is to address this knowledge gap and to explore the relationships between internal knowledge creation and absorptive capabilities, and incremental and radical innovation performance. The study also contributes to analyzing the complex effect that organizational size has in the whole innovation process, influencing its antecedents (internal knowledge creation capability and absorptive capability) as well as its outputs (incremental and radical innovation performance), as the literature has produced inconsistent results and the issue is subject to continuing debate. This study demonstrates that incremental innovation performance is positively affected by both knowledge accumulation capabilities and size. However, results show that only absorptive capability has a positive direct effect on radical innovation performance, whereas size has a negative non-significant effect on it. The effect of size on knowledge accumulation capabilities also turns out to be mixed. It appears to increase internal knowledge creation capability, but it does not affect the absorption of new external knowledge.The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Plan for R&D of Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ref. ECO2009-12522)