Search

Copyright of Investigación Administrativa is the property of ESCA Santo Tomas - IPN and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent studies within the innovation systems perspective have not paid enough attention to the role that Vocational Training (VT) centres and technical workers can play in innovation processes. In this paper we review the recent international literature on the issue and present an exploratory case study carried out in the Northern Spanish region of Navarre, which has a high level of both industrial activity and VT education. The study is based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from industrial SMEs and VT agents. The different types of relationships between VT centres and SMEs are analysed: formal education, in-company work training, hiring of graduates, continuous training, and innovation-related services. Results show that firms have a highly positive perception of VT centres' more 'traditional' missions (graduate education and employability), but more advanced and innovation- related missions have a limited reach right now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By effectively managing their resources, firms can gain access to superior bundles of resources, combine them into valuable capabilities, and fully exploit their potential for generating economic rents. This work presents an integrative model that comprises the different stages involved in managing technological intangible resources and links them to competitive advantage. We also study the main differences in this regard between innovative and technology-intensive industries and firms in other industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show the influence of certified environmental management systems in the transition from control to pollution prevention. Taking as a reference point the environmental innovation, a number of environmental control and prevention oriented practices are analyzed providing empirical evidence of their implementation over the firms in the Spanish metal industry. Our results show a significant decrease in the implementation of preventive innovations among not certified firms which stresses the importance of the certification when carrying out this kind of environmental innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo presenta un estudio sobre el tema de la inovacíon en un entorno empresarial, comparando su papel en las microempresas contra las empresas grandes. Se examinan la influencia de factores extra-organizativos, las características de los miembros de la organización, y las relativas a la propia organización sobre la decisión a implementar innovaciones.

Copyright of Contaduría y Administración is the property of Facultad de Contaduria y Administracion-Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many studies have examined the importance of innovation for the ability of an enterprise to compete. However, work on innovation in social economy enterprises and particularly in labour companies is still scarce. While of an exploratory nature, the present study contributes empirical evidence on which factors (internal and external) explain these social economy enterprises' attitude to innovation. The results of an empirical study of 218 labour plcs (Sociedades Anónimas Laborales) in Andalucia have made it possible to describe the innovative behaviour of the companies analysed and examine which variables exert the greatest influence in this respect. By this means, the companies have been identified as falling into three groups on the basis of their behaviour in relation to innovation. The main differences between them lie in the variations in their percentages of university- educated staff and in their divergent strategic attitude towards innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bibliographical review on patents as a source of information for innovation in competitive environments, as well as a description of the advantages and limitations of their use as a source of information. The possible applications in the technical, scientific, commercial and legal fields are identified and classified. It refers to the work of the librarian related to the patents because its treatment requires knowledge of the profession. It is concluded that patents should be considered invaluable source of relevant information for competitiveness in organizations. However, their use has not been promoted accurately in developing countries like ours. This tendency should be corrected in order to make use of this resource for the development and innovation of our region. It covers the material published from 1977 until September, 2009, of Latin America and Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyze whether innovation in companies is related to the introduction of new forms of labour organization and personnel policies that imply more participative human resource management. At the same time, we will tackle the relations between firms' innovative capacities and the managements' promotion of values oriented towards higher participation, commitment and autonomy of workers. The empirical analysis is based on a survey carried out in companies of more than 30 workers. The results obtained after applying different techniques of analysis indicate that the innovative organizations do attribute greater importance to values that promote workers' participation, initiative and autonomy. However, the same results also demonstrate that these companies have progressed little in the implementation of organizational modifications and mechanisms needed to be able to put these values into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the analysis of a series of list posters produced in the first years of primary education. The research takes place in a public school in the city of Barcelona that is involved in a program that assesses innovation in the practice of teaching reading and writing. The innovation is focused on the reading, comprehension, and writing of actual texts - generally children's books - that are read, commented on, and rewritten using the texts as sources of reference. The analysis of the source texts is displayed for all to see as lists on posters in the classroom. At the end of a school year, a total of 27 list posters were made by three classes. The results of the analysis of these posters show that the creation of lists based on texts encourages the learning of writing conventions, helping at the same time to build a collective memory of the language typical of written texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation as a source of competitive advantage for companies is a factor which is widely recognised by business agents, governments and the academic world, and has been extensively studied, above all, in for-profit business environments. However, its management is not without difficulties, confronted by companies in the for-profit as well as the non-profit making sector. This work first establishes the impact of innovation on the Social Economy. Next, it makes a revision of the elements of innovation management according to specialised literature. The third section presents the results of a study on innovation management carried out by a group of innovative companies from the Basque Country, of which half are Cooperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although innovation is a key factor for the survival of enterprises, the level of innovation in Spain is still far from the objectives set by the Lisbon Strategy. As a consequence, Spanish administrations have launched various measures to improve it. Innovation requires acquiring and selecting the best information available, which means mainly using scientific and technical databases, but these are little known in the business world. The article gives a brief overview of the use of information for innovation in enterprises and comments on the main findings of the 2008 Cotec Report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo presenta una carta del director de la revista que describe los contenidos de la edición actual. Temas discutidos incluyen la acreditación de Universia Business Review por la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología y la evaluación de componentes de innovación demostrados en empresas españolas.

The article announces the call for submissions for the 2011 Spanish economics and innovation management award "III Premio Cátedra UAM-Accenture en Economía y Gestión de la Innovación."