0000000000248553
AUTHOR
Ana García-granero
The pivotal role of students’ absorptive capacity in management learning
Within a research context dominated by an increasing interest in innovative learning method- ologies in management education, an individual’s capacity to establish links between existing and new knowledge, that is, absorptive capacity (AC), has been surprisingly neglected in management (higher) education inquiry. This study helps to close this gap by investigating the role of management students’ AC on their academic performance. The study also examines the moderating effect on this relationship of using traditional learning methodologies (such as lectures), innovative learning methodologies (such as interacting with digital platforms), and having a cooperative climate in the classroom. Sec…
Do firms benefit from interactions with public research organisations beyond innovation? An analysis of small firms
Abstract In this paper we argue that there is an extensive number of studies examining how firms obtain new products from their interactions with scientific agents, but other type of benefits has been overlooked. Specifically, we add to previous literature by considering not only product innovation, but also exploratory (long-term) and exploitative (short-term) results. We administer a tailored survey to firms collaborating with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and data was completed with secondary sources. Results based on a sample of 756 firms suggest that firms consider all types of result as moderately important to them. Moreover, we observe that small firms report higher be…
Strengthening SMEs’ innovation culture through collaborations with public research organizations. Do all firms benefit equally?
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether collaborating with public research organizations (PROs) contributes to strengthening the innovation culture of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We examine to what extent their innovation culture is reinforced by collaborations with research organizations and investigate the type of organizational strategies that enhance this effect of collaboration. The empirical study is based on a survey of firms that collaborate with the largest Spanish PRO, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Our results indicate that SMEs differ greatly in their capacity to strengthen their innovation culture through collaboration with research organizatio…
Top Management Team Diversity and Ambidexterity: The Contingent Role of Shared Responsibility and CEO Cognitive Trust
Earlier research has suggested that diversity is a double-edged sword when achieving organizational ambidexterity. While it may contribute to the development of new combinations of exploration and exploitation, it may also lead to disagreements and potential conflict within top management teams (TMTs). To improve our understanding of the effectiveness of diversity in ambidextrous organizations, we develop a synergistic perspective on TMT diversity and examine how two types of diversity – functional and age diversity – affect the achievement of organizational ambidexterity. We also identify shared responsibility and CEO cognitive trust as important contingencies that may complement the effec…
Unraveling the link between managerial risk-taking and innovation: The mediating role of a risk-taking climate
Scholars have proposed that taking risks in organizations is important for explaining innovation performance. Scholars traditionally have analyzed this link from two unconnected perspectives. From a managerial perspective, entrepreneurial orientation and leadership theories have been used to explain the positive relation between manager's risk-taking and innovation. On the other hand, research on creativity suggests that a risk-taking climate helps to explain the generation of novel ideas. However, there is little empirical research analyzing this link. This study examines the possibility of a connection between managerial risk-taking propensity, risk-taking climate and innovation performan…
Shaping the firm's external search strategy
This paper explores the determinants of external knowledge search strategies, specifically, exploitative and exploratory search. The literature emphasizes environmental context and technological resources, especially R&D, as important determinants of the search strategy. In this paper we focus on two types of the firm's formal structure: formalized and decentralized structures. The study uses survey data from the ceramic tile industry in Spain. The results show that a competitive environment and a decentralized organizational structure play a role in shaping the firm's external search strategy, but that R&D has no effect. We find that competition inhibits exploratory search, while a decentr…
Enhancing organisational commitment through task significance: the moderating role of openness to experience
International audience; Researchers have extensively explored the factors influencing employees’ organisational commitment. However, few studies make an explicit distinction between different commitment types when exploring its determinants, and the scholarly attention to individual differences is also limited. In this paper, we confirm that developing managerial interventions to enhance task significance can be useful to promote organisational commitment, but this relationship is contingent on the commitment type and the employees’ openness to experience. We focus on two forms of organisational commitment: affective and continuance commitment. Our study shows that task significance is a be…
Is R&D Enough to Take Advantage From External Knowledge?: Focusing on Coordination Mechanisms
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of research and development (R&D) and coordination mechanisms (such as decentralization in decision-making and formalization of organizational processes) in the transformation of external knowledge into innovation results. We use survey data for performing standard ordinary least squares regressions in a representative sample of firms from the Spanish Ceramic Tile Industry. The results suggest that R&D is an important moderator influencing the relationship between acquiring external knowledge and innovation outcomes. Second, formalization tends to have a detrimental effect in the transformation of external knowledge into innovation outputs. T…
Managing risk-taking to enhance innovation in organizations
Trabajo presentado al Organizational Innovation Workshop: "Organizational Innovation and its antecedents, performance consequences and technological complementarities: Towards a research agenda" celebrado en Valencia (España) el 21 de Febrero de 2013.