Innovation attributes and managers' decisions about the adoption of innovations in organizations: A meta-analytical review

The adop­tion of in­no­va­tions has emerged as a dom­i­nant re­search topic in the man­age­ment of in­no­va­tion in or­ga­ni­za­tions, al­though in­ves­ti­ga­tions of­ten yield mixed re­sults. To help man­agers and re­searchers im­prove their ef­fec­tive­ness, the au­thors em­ployed a meta-analy­sis in­te­grated with struc­tural equa­tion mod­el­ing to an­a­lyze the as­so­ci­a­tions be­tween the at­trib­utes of in­no­va­tions, man­agers' be­hav­ioral pref­er­ences, and or­ga­ni­za­tions' in­no­va­tion adop­tion de­ci­sions in a me­di­ated-mod­er­ated frame­work. Our find­ings of­fer ev­i­dence that at­trib­utes of in­no­va­tions in­flu­ence man­agers' be­hav­ioral pref­er­ences and, con­se­quently, adop­tion de­ci­sions in or­ga­ni­za­tions. We also ob­serve the sig­nif­i­cance of the con­text in which the adop­tion de­ci­sion oc­curs as well as the re­search set­tings em­ployed by schol­ars. Fi­nally, we dis­cuss the the­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion and prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions of our meta-an­a­lyt­i­cal re­sults

Innovation Attributes and Managers' Decisions about the Adoption of Innovations in Organizations: A Meta-Analytical Review

The adoption of innovations has emerged as one of the dominant research topic in the management of innovations in organizations, though investigations often yield mixed results. To help managers and researchers improve the effectiveness of their efforts, the authors employed meta-analysis integrated by structural equation modeling to analyze the associations between the attributes of innovations, behavioral preferences of managers and organizations' innovation adoption decisions in a mediated-moderated framework. Our findings offer evidences that attributes of innovations influence behavioral preferences of managers and, in turn, adoption decisions in organizations. We also observe that the context in which the adoption decision takes place and the research settings employed by scholars matter. Finally, the theoretical contribution and practical implications of our meta-analytical results are discussed. Keywords: Attributes of innovations, Managers' behavioral preferences, Organizations' innovation adoption decisions, Meta-analysis, Mediation-moderatio

Founder-involvement in R&D and SMEs performance. An expanded mediated-moderated framework

Objectives. The aim of the paper is to shed light on the pivotal role of founders’ involvement in R&D and its reflexes on SMEs performance. Methodology. A conceptual framework was outlined and operationalized in terms of a mediation/moderation model. Hypotheses were developed and tested it on a random sample of 350 SMEs locate in low research-intensive areas of Southern Italy. An augmented cross-sectional design, which measures key variables using different sources at different time points, was employed. We adopted a seemingly unrelated regression to jointly analyze variables and their interactions. Findings. We observe that founders’ involvement in R&D influence positively SMEs’ performance. We also found evidence that founders’ involvement in R&D-SMEs performance association is mediated by R&D resources, Quality of the technological knowledge, and innovation outputs. At the same time the R&D resources - Quality of the technological knowledge association is positively moderated by the share of R&D subsidies. Research limits. Our study is affected by various limitations. As an example, only revenue-based measures are used as a proxy of firm performance. In addition, for controlling heterogeneity in estimates, data refer to a well-defined time window as well as to manufacturing SMEs located in specific low-research intensity geographic areas of Italy. Practical implications. Our study reveals that founders - with their firm- and context-specific capabilities - while enmeshed with R&D activities, contribute to SMEs performance. Policy makers should create incentives for founders to be involved to some extent in inventive activities. Further implications are also envisaged for both funding and training educational services. Originality of the study. Building on the intersection between resource orchestration and competence-based perspectives, we conceived and empirically analyzed founders as key actors for inventive resource orchestration at the firm level and how and under what conditions the resource orchestration made by founders is likely to nurture the performance even of low research-intensive SMEs

Determining the dynamics of collaboration in EU Framework Programmes under a network perspective

Collaborative networks gained attention in the field of economics of innovation in the recent past. One of the main interests concerns the temporal analysis of such networks, both in a scientific and in a European policy context. At the European level indeed, the objective is to promote strong and durable partnerships among research institutions and with industry, going beyond the usual project-based cooperation. The purpose of this study is to investigate these long-lasting collaborative relationships between the organizations that received funds by all the first eight European Framework Programmes (EU FPs). EU FPs are multi-annual programmes providing funds mainly to EU member states, but also to associate countries, in order to promote long-term investments in several areas. Considering participations in European projects funded by all the first eight EU FPs gives us the possibility to analyze the dynamics of collaborations in the context of European research projects over a long-time span. In more detail, we adopt a novel approach to model the dynamics of participation in EU FPs by means of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and statistics tools. The main objective is to estimate the probabilities of moving from one position to another - in terms of centrality measures - across different FPs, and to understand if the position within subsequent collaborative research networks is affected by a certain path dependency. Our results confirm the existence of a path dependency, in the sense that participating in previous FPs provides a competitive advantage to organizations due to several network benefits, such as growing experience, competencies, and popularity. Phenomena of "preferential attachment" are also evident. Finally, we find that the estimated probability transition matrices are able to highlight relevant events that affected the European Union and its strategies in the field of research, which are the Treaty of Maastricht and the adoption of the European Research Area (ERA)

La creazione del valore nell'ottica del cliente finale

Lo studio propone un metodo per la stima del valore creato da una imprese rispetto ai suoi clienti finali. L'analisi considera questo valore creato sia in ottica statica che dinamica, considerando le interazioni con i concorrent