Search results for "IRM"
showing 10 items of 4043 documents
La production de compétences et les règles salariales : contribution à la compréhension des transformations de la relation d'emploi
2005
This article aims at offering a better understanding of the discussion in relation to the individualisation of the employment relationship based on the competency model. Our starting point is the idea that firms use a diversity of procedures to obtain the competencies they need. Based on a survey of five Portuguese banks, this article shows that firms use policies of incitation in order to make workers to mobilise the right competencies : in this respect, earning policies appear to be the mean of resolving problems of coordination. Competency has only a weak impact on fixed wage but plays an important role on other parts of individual earnings like the share of profit. These findings questi…
The Rise of the BRICS and Higher Education Dynamics
2015
This book deals with the developments, policies and perspectives of higher education in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the BRICS countries. Our starting point is the evolution of the higher education systems in the BRICS countries, looking less, however, at the institutional dimensions of the universities and more at the broader context (e.g. operational and regulatory) in terms of four main issues or core themes, namely: supply and demand, stakeholders, governmental policy and research and innovation in the light of international trends and globalization.
Unbundling technology adoption and tfp at the firm level. Do intangibles matter?
2012
We use a panel of European firms to investigate the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We distinguish between total factor productivity (tfp) and technology adoption, whereas standard estimations consider only a notion of productivity that conflates the two effects. Although we are unable to address simultaneity, we allow for the existence of multiple technologies within sectors through a mixture model approach. We find that intangible assets have nonnegligible effects that both push firms toward better technologies (technology adoption effects) and allow for more efficient exploitation of a given technology (tfp effects).
Complementarities in innovation strategy: do intangibles play a role in enhancing firm performance?
2017
This article assesses the role of investments in intangible capital and their potential complementarities as a way to improve firm productivity. We focus on the three intangible resources that, according to the literature, have the greatest strategic importance: research and development (R & D), advertising, and human capital. To test our hypotheses, we use a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms and consider estimates of total factor productivity through a generalized method of moments approach. Our results show evidence of complementarities between R & D and advertising investments and between advertising and human capital. However, they are not conclusive in the case of R & D and h…
Founding-family-controlled firms, intergenerational succession, and firm value
2022
Using a unique, hand-collected data sample and panel-data econometric techniques, we analyse the impact of founding-family control and intergenerational succession on the value of Chilean listed companies. After controlling for firm- and ownership-specific characteristics, we find an inverse U-shaped relationship between a founding family’s degree of ownership and firm value. Hence, family ownership at first increases firm value. However, when family ownership exceeds a threshold of about 38 percent of outstanding shares, the family takes advantage of its power in the firm and extracts wealth from minority shareholders. Further, if the founder of the company is the CEO or chairman of the bo…
Do firms share the same functional form of their growth rate distribution? A statistical test
2014
We introduce a new statistical test of the hypothesis that a balanced panel of firms have the same growth rate distribution or, more generally, that they share the same functional form of growth rate distribution. We applied the test to European Union and US publicly quoted manufacturing firms data, considering functional forms belonging to the Subbotin family of distributions. While our hypotheses are rejected for the vast majority of sets at the sector level, we cannot rejected them at the subsector level, indicating that homogenous panels of firms could be described by a common functional form of growth rate distribution.
An international cohort comparison of size effects on job growth
2015
The contribution of different-sized businesses to job creation continues to attract policymakers’ attention, however, it has recently been recognized that conclusions about size were confounded with the effect of age. We probe the role of size, controlling for age, by comparing the cohorts of firms born in 1998 over their first decade of life, using variation across half a dozen northern European countries Austria, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the UK to pin down size effects. We find that a very small proportion of the smallest firms play a crucial role in accounting for cross-country differences in job growth. A closer analysis reveals that the initial size distribution and surviv…
The impact of corporate characteristics on the financial decisions of companies: Evidence on funding decisions by Italian SMEs
2015
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) represent a large percentage of the corporate tissue of developed countries, but they do not have adequate attention. In fact, various researchers have focused their studies on larger and well-known companies. This paper aims to investigate the impact of corporate characteristic on the financial choices of SMEs, with a specific focus on agro-food micro companies. Access to finance is vital in business start-up, development and growth for SMEs, all with very different needs and facing different challenges in terms of finance compared to large companies. The lack of equity invested in small enterprises makes them more dependent on other external sources (e.…
To survive or succeed? : An analysis of biotechnology firms
2017
In this paper, we address the question whether there exists differences in the determinants that support survival versus success of small and medium-sized high-tech firms. We examine this question in the context of Finnish biotechnology industry by analyzing the survival of all dedicated biotechnology firms in the period of 1978–2008. We argue and show that the success and survival of firms are not necessarily driven by similar determinants. Specifically, we find that while the role of different types of alliances, focused market scope as well as legitimacy of the industry seem to be important both ensuring in survival and enhancing successful performance, determinants related to sources of…
Financial literacy, value creation and firm performance. An investigation of Italian small and medium enterprises
2023
This article aims to determine the influence of entrepreneurs’ financial literacy for the growth of SMEs’ value. The paper verifies the hypothesis that there is a significant relationship between financial literacy and value creation, as indicated by economic value added (EVA®). The study analyses 162 Italian SMEs operating in the textile and clothing sector. The analysis period is between 2011 and 2013. Regression analysis and correlation analysis have been applied to test the hypotheses. The results suggest a positive and significant relationship between financial literacy and the variables that drive the value creation. Greater financial literacy allows SMEs to optimise their capital str…