Workers’ mobility and patterns of knowledge diffusion: evidence from Italian data

The channels through which firms access and acquire new and relevant knowledge for their innovative activities is a critical issue to the geography and the management of innovation. In this regard, recent studies have suggested that the mobility of workers across firms is a primary source of new knowledge for the hiring firm and, more in general, of knowledge diffusion across firms. However, little evidence has been presented and discussed about the role and the impact of workers’ mobility on the processes of knowledge transfer across firms. The present paper, thus, aims precisely at contributing to this stream of research by making use of unique data on Italian inventors’ curriculum vitae. The results of the empirical analysis indicate that the mobility of inventors is a mechanism that spurs processes of cumulative knowledge and innovation building from the departure firm to the destination one and significantly impacts on knowledge diffusion across firms.     

Strategic Knowledge Networks: The Case of IT Support for Eurojuris Law Firms in Norway

Law firms are knowledge intensive, and the use of advanced technology may well transform these organizations in the future. To examine knowledge management in Norwegian law firms, a study involving four phases of data collection and analysis was designed. The third phase comprised a survey of Norwegian law firms on the use of information technology to support inter-organizational knowledge management. Two predictors, firm co-operation and knowledge co-operation, were significant. The fourth phase was a survey of Norwegian law firms belonging to the Eurojuris network. The Eurojuris law firms had significantly higher IT use, firm co-operation and knowledge co-operation than the other law firms. There was no significant difference in inter-organizational trust, both Eurojuris firms and non-network firms reported that they trusted other law firms.     

The Impact of Regulations on Firms: A Case Study of the Biotech Industry*

Drawing on semi‐structured interviews carried out with founders, managers, and senior scientists in start‐up biotech firms, this paper illustrates that the socio‐legal literature's characterization of small firms as less compliance oriented is too neat. Small firms do not necessarily have a limited knowledge and comprehension of the law. Nor do they necessarily have low levels of motivation to improve and maintain health and safety standards. In fact, the opposite may be true. Small firms may approach the regulatory ideal where the routines, procedures, and precautionary measures prescribed by regulations permeate the organizations.     

Firm heterogeneity,absorptive capacity and technical linkages with external parties in Italy

While it is widely acknowledged that internal R&D is a fundamental source of the ability to absorb, select and use external knowledge, severe data limitations prevent from capturing differences across firms in this respect. Using a novel dataset supplied by the Italian Bureau of Statistics, we highlight that, when controlling for internal R&D efforts, not all firms are equally prone to gain access to external technology, and to the knowledge provided by universities in particular. We find that firms which do not only perform R&D activities but also belong to a group exhibit a higher propensity to access external knowledge by either contracting out R&D or cooperating with external parties, as compared to independent firms that are not organized into groups. This premium persists when controlling for different measures of internal R&D efforts. Furthermore, the differential in the propensity to access external knowledge is particularly high in the case of R&D performers belonging to foreign groups, i.e. Italian affiliates of foreign owned companies; and it is even higher in the case of the few Italian firms that have R&D activities abroad. The relative dis-advantage of independent firms, which represent the bulk of the Italian industry and include most small and medium sized enterprises, appears to be less of an obstacle in the case of linkages with universities, especially when R&D contracting out is considered.     

Knowledge management technology in law firms: stages of growth

A law firm can be understood as a social community specializing in the speed and efficiency of creating and transferring legal knowledge. Knowledge management was first introduced to law firms in order to help them create, share and apply knowledge more effectively: information technology (IT) might well play an important role in the success of such knowledge management initiatives. In this paper, IT support for knowledge management is linked to stages of growth, with a stages‐of‐growth model proposed that consists of four stages. The first stage addresses the end‐user tools made available to knowledge workers (people to technology), while the second involves information about who knows what (people to people). The third stage concerns the information held by knowledge workers (people to documents), with information systems actually solving knowledge problems constituting the fourth and final stage (people to systems). Stages‐of‐growth models have been widely used in both organizational research and IT management research: such models have also been criticized for their lack of empirical validity. This paper develops such a survey instrument in order to test a knowledge management technology stage model empirically.     

Managing the knowledge asset: America's competitive challenge

The American Economy may still be ridiag on economic legacies that are either outmoded or ill-suited to affect the contemporary competitive environment. One legacy is the managerial dependence of scientific management principles; another is a continued belief in the linear concept of science-driven technology. A second theme discussed in this article is the belief that firms must conceptualize outcomes of their operations. Achieving them will then better focus technological research agendas as well as the need to treat management itself as a technology. Finally, the article suggests that the phenomenon of consortia may be one of the most important economic experiments of the latter part of the century. The potential and pragmatic influence of the consortia is considered and its potential is suggested as problematic.     

Social murder and conservative economics

Abstract

The hallmark of conservative economic theory is that firms should not be constrained by the state in their pursuit of profit. State intervention is not necessary because firms must obey the will of ‘the market’. Companies must please their consumers or they will not sell anything, and they must treat their workers well or they will have no labour force. Conservative economics assumes that decisions reflect individual preferences and free choice. In this world of voluntary actions, firms and individuals stand on pretty much equal footing; no one has any more power than anyone else.     

Geographic proximity and university–industry interaction: the case of Mexico

This paper analyses whether geographic proximity favours specific channels of university–industry interaction when firms collaborate with universities and with government research centres. Our study also provides insights regarding the relationship between the associated channel and the role of firms’ absorptive capacities. Our results show that firms with higher levels of absorptive capacities tend to interact more independently of their location. Additionally, interaction with non-local universities generally includes the transfer of codified forms of knowledge, while links with local universities includes more tacit forms of knowledge. Policy implications derived from this analysis focus on fostering interaction at local and non-local levels.     

Professional Innovation: Corporate Lawyers and Private Lawmaking

Through an intensive examination of the development and diffusion of a new legal device—the shareholder rights' plan or poison pill—this article demonstrates the entrepreneurial, lawmaking role of corporate lawyers. This study case suggests that corporate lawyers may act as legal entrepreneurs, developing and promoting new legal devices and strategies on behalf of actual and potential clients. If affirmed by the courts, these devices or techniques are rapidly diffused thereby contributing to the creation of new legal knowledge. The creation and successful defense of the shareholder rights' plan led to both new caselaw and statute law. In this way, corporate practitioners contribute to the creation of new legal knowledge, suggesting a bottom-up approach to knowledge creation rather than the conventional top-down view. It is suggested that legal innovations like the shareholder rights' plan are more likely to be developed in newer firms than in established firms and in specialized firms than general service law firms.     

The M&;A dynamics of European science-based entrepreneurial firms

This paper investigates the dynamics of a sample of 131 science-based entrepreneurial firms (SBEFs), selected out of 500 innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that went public in Europe in the period 1995–2003. We found that the market for control of these firms was active, with most of our sample firms being acquired after their Initial Public Offering (IPO), usually by companies operating within the same industry. Floated SBEFs showed a higher propensity to be acquired than independent firms; this distinction persisted after controlling for intellectual capital and other possible determinants. While university affiliation enhanced attractiveness in the eyes of other companies, it negatively affected the propensity for acquisition. We argue that university-based firms do contribute to the technology transfer process, as evidenced by the widespread interest of the business world in investing in these firms. The creation of a SBEF is a first step in the process of commercial exploitation of university-research, while the subsequent step of going public is a sign of the success of this entrepreneurial venture. The take-over of SBEFs may be a final outcome of the process of knowledge diffusion.     

The changing of the guard: Top management characteristics, organizational strain, and antitrust offending

From within an organizational strain perspective, this paper examines the effects of managerial succession, CEO background, decentralized management, and product dominant strategies on the reported corporate antitrust offending levels of 43 basic manufacturing companies over a 22-year period. In the aggregate, findings suggest that past illegal involvement predicts future offending; companies headed by finance and administrative CEOs have higher offending levels than do firms headed by CEOs from other backgrounds; a turnover in top management generally decreases offending levels; the pursuit of product dominant strategies increases the number of anticompetitive acts; and offending levels are unrelated to whether new leaders are recruited from within or outside the firm, whether the CEO is also Chair of the Board of Directors, or whether management is centralized or decentralized. The effects of some variables on corporate offending interact with firm performance.     

Motivating Management: Corporate Compliance in Environmental Protection*

Based on interviews with facility managers in the electroplating and chemical industries, this study examines regulated firms’ perceptions of how various instrumental, normative, and social factors motivated their firms’ environmental actions. We found that “implicit general deterrence” (the overall effect of sustained inspection and enforcement activity) was far more important than either specific or general deterrence, and that deterrence in any form was of far greater concern to small and medium‐sized enterprises than it was to large ones. Most reputation‐sensitive firms in the environmentally sensitive chemical industry chose to go substantially beyond compliance for reasons that related to risk management and to the perceived need to protect their social license to operate. Almost half our respondents also provided normative explanations for why they complied. Overall, we conclude that there are various, often interwoven, strands that must be taken into account in understanding what motivates corporate environmental behavior, and how they play out depends very much on the size and sophistication of companies themselves and on the characteristics of the industry sector within which they are located.     

University spillovers into small technology-based firms: channel, mechanism, and geography

This study examines how university knowledge spills over into small technology-based firms in Japan. Estimated Heckman selection models taking into account the timing of university-industry research collaboration and geographical proximity to spillover pools reveal that cooperative research with universities positively affects R&D productivity of small technology-based firms with a three-year lag. Among small technology-based firms that collaborate with universities in research, firms with local ties have a greater advantage in improving the quality of their R&D personnel through the acquisition of complementary knowledge. Theoretical and policy implications of empirical results are discussed.     

University knowledge and firm innovation: evidence from European countries

In recent decades, firms have intensified the exploration of external sources of knowledge to enhance their innovation capabilities. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the factors that affect the importance of academic knowledge for firms’ innovation activities. An integrated approach that simultaneously considers country- and firm-level factors is adopted. Regarding the former factors, the analysis shows that the entrepreneurial orientation of university and the quality of academic research increase the importance of knowledge transfers from universities to firms. This suggests that the environmental and institutional context contributes to cross-national disparities in university-industry interactions and the effectiveness of knowledge transfer. In regard to the latter factors, the results indicate that firms oriented toward open search strategies and radical innovations are more likely to draw knowledge from universities. Furthermore, firms belonging to high technology sectors and firms with high absorptive capacity place greater value on the various links with universities. With respect to firm size, the estimates show an inverted U-shaped relation with the importance of universities as a source of knowledge.     

Innovation and internationalization: the case of Italy

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of international activities on knowledge output. For this purpose, we employ a dataset containing exclusively qualitative information about a sample of small and medium Italian manufacturing firms. In the econometric analysis, a probit model is used. The results of the estimations highlight that firms active in international markets generate more knowledge than their counterparts which sell in the national market only. There are two possible explanations of this result. First, globally engaged firms employ more knowledge inputs, such as higher innovation expenditures. Second, international firms are more innovative because they can access to a larger flow of ideas from external sources.     

Never mind the quality feel the width: University–industry links and government financial support for innovation in small high-technology businesses in the UK and the USA

In this paper we use a size and industry matched sample of over 1,900 UK and US businesses for the period 2004–05 in the manufacturing and business services sectors to analyse the relative “strength” of the university–industry ecosystems in which these firms operate in the two economies. Our analysis shows that in both countries universities per se play a quantitatively smaller role as a source of knowledge for business innovation than either the business sector itself or a variety of organisations intermediating between the university and business sectors. Our analysis reveals a much more diffuse university–industry ecosystem in the UK in which a higher proportion of businesses claim links external to themselves in their pursuit of knowledge for innovation and a higher proportion report directly connecting with universities. US firms are more likely to access knowledge through a combination of business and intermediary sources and are less likely to have established formal collaborative or partnership agreements in the 3 years prior to the survey. We also find, however, that a higher proportion of US firms place a very high value on the connections they have with universities and are much more likely to commit resources to support such innovation related university interactions. A similar pattern of diffuse but weaker links characterise the supply of public sector financial assistance for innovation in our sample firms. UK firms are more likely to be in receipt of assistance, but receive far less per firm in absolute terms and relative to their R&D expenditures. It appears that the UK university–industry ecosystem is characterised by a greater width than quality of interaction.     

Contextualising Regional Innovation Systems in a Globalising Learning Economy: On Knowledge Bases and Institutional Frameworks

In order to advance the understanding of which types of regional innovation system represent effective innovation support for what kinds of industry in different regions analyses must be contextualized by reference to the actual knowledge base of various industries as well as to the regional and national institutional framework, which strongly shape the innovation processes of firms. Of special importance is the linkage between the larger institutional frameworks of the national innovation and business systems, and the character of regional innovation systems. In making the arguments about a general correspondence between the macro-institutional characteristics of the economy and the dominant form and character of its regional innovation systems a link is provided to the literature on ‘varieties of capitalism’ and national business systems.     

Advertising and the Price and Quality of Legal Services: The Case for Legal Clinics

Because the holding in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona is narrow and because some lawyers remain opposed to advertising, the dispute over lawyer advertising continues. Many who favor restricting advertising contend that it will not benefit consumers. They argue that prices must either rise to cover the cost of advertising or, if prices do fall, that quality must also drop.
This article addresses itself to both charges. The first section is theoretical, demonstrating how advertising could lower the costs of producing legal services. Advertising increases the volume of services a lawyer can expect to sell. Greater volume, in turn, allows greater specialization in production, more effective use of systems management, and the substitution of paralegals and capital for lawyer inputs. The authors argue that each of these changes will lower costs, thereby lowering prices without necessarily reducing quality. The second section is empirical, comparing the prices and particularly the quality of services produced by a heavy advertiser, the Legal Clinic of Jacoby & Meyers, and the traditional firms in the Los Angeles market with which the clinic competes. Quality is defined both subjectively and objectively, and original data are presented indicating that the quality of service that the clinic supplies is at least equivalent, and on some measures better, than the quality of service that traditional firms provide.     

Labour as a knowledge carrier: how increased mobility influences entrepreneurship

According to the knowledge-based spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE), entrepreneurship is positively associated with the knowledge endowment level. An increase in knowledge expands the opportunity set, which is then exploited by heterogeneous entrepreneurs. The objective of this paper is to empirically test the validity of the KSTE by employing a detailed database comprising more than 19 million observations for the period 2001–2008 at the level of individuals, firms and regions in Sweden. Knowledge is claimed to be partly embodied in labour, implying that an increase in labour mobility can be expected to influence knowledge endowment at the regional level. Our dependent variable is an individual who has remained in a region throughout the time period considered. Controlling for a number of other variables, inter-regional labour inflows and intra-regional mobility levels are shown to exert a strong positive effect on entrepreneurship. This contrasts with inter-regional outflows, which negatively affect entrepreneurial entry. Another noteworthy result is that the probability of exploiting an increased knowledge stock through entrepreneurship increases by 15 % points if the individual has previous experience in starting a firm.     

Creating value through external intellectual property commercialization: a desorptive capacity view

In open innovation systems, capturing value through external intellectual property (IP) commercialization is an increasingly important strategy for firms to keep pace with competitive changes. However, many firms have major difficulties in creating value through external patent exploitation. To understand these challenges, this paper explores how firms manage their external patent exploitation based on a multiple case study research design with fourteen firms from the pharmaceutical and chemical industry. Adopting a desorptive capacity perspective we find four main factors influencing the firms’ management of external patent exploitation: the type of value creation, the organizational structure, the locus of initiative, and the extent of know-how transfer along with the patent. Based on these factors, three archetypes of external patent exploitation with different levels of desorptive capacity are identified. The article extends the concept of desorptive capacity and existing literature on intellectual property management in the context of open innovation. Managerial implications helping firms to implement external IP commercialization structures are discussed.