Search

Modularizing a system, a product, or a process can have positive effects on performance in many instances. That it may have adverse consequences has also been discussed, although on balance the literature seems inclined to consider that modularity is desirable in most cases. In this paper, we put forward a feature of modular systems that extant research has not considered in spite of its strong performance-hindering potential. Starting from the premise that organizations are essentially patterns of formal and informal interactions, and modules within organizations are places where these interactions accumulate and reinforce, we argue that modularity can exacerbate issues related to (low-)performance spillovers from one organizational actor to another. With psychosocial affect as the channel connecting the formal and the informal spheres, we develop a simple model that combines elements of psychology research, network science, and organization theory to study how formal and informal elements jointly determine organizational performance under different modularity configurations. We find that organizational performance is lower when the alignment of formal and informal is stronger: informal interaction augments local accumulation of stress caused by formal aspects of firm organization. However, this result depends heavily on the modularity of formal organization: feedbacks between formal and informal elements cause much harsher performance degradation in modular systems. This suggests the exercise of caution when considering the possibility to modularize a production system.

This article estimates a dynamic structural model of firm R&D investment in twelve Swedish manufacturing industries and uses it to measure rates of return to R&D and to simulate the impact of trade restrictions on the investment incentives. Export market profits are a substantial source of the expected return to R&D. R&D spending is found to have a larger impact on firm productivity in the export market than in the domestic market. Counterfactual simulations show that trade restrictions lower both the expected return to R&D and R&D investment level, thus reducing an important source of the dynamic gains from trade. A 10% tariff on Swedish exports reduces the expected benefits of R&D for the median firm by 18.6% and lowers the amount of R&D spending by 7.6% in the high-tech industries. The corresponding reductions in the low-tech industries are 20.6% and 5.5%, respectively. R&D adjustments in response to export tariffs mainly occur on the intensive, rather than the extensive, margin.

The study of innovation in Latin American firms has concentrated almostexclusively on the determinants and impacts of innovation investmentsand outputs. Less attention has been paid to how firms innovate. Thisstudy applies factor and cluster analysis to a unique dataset ofharmonized innovation surveys from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,El Salvador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, to identify the maininnovation practices and strategies performed by Latin American firms.Three of the four identified innovation strategies can be linked toresults from similar studies using European firm-level data. However,none of these strategies resembles a strong science or researchorientation. An approach to "open management" innovation emerges asidiosyncratic for Latin American firms. These innovation strategies areassociated with differences in sales growth and labor productivity. Theanalysis also shows that firm resources and capabilities driveinnovation strategy selection.

Digital entrepreneurship has been described as a “great leveler” in terms of equalizing the entrepreneurial playing field for women. However, little is known of the emancipatory possibilities offered by digital entrepreneurship for women constrained by social and cultural practices such as male guardianship of female relatives and legally enforced gender segregation. In order to address this research gap, this paper examines women’s engagement in digital entrepreneurship in emerging economies with restrictive social and cultural practices. In so doing, we draw upon the analytical frameworks provided by entrepreneurship as emancipation and cyberfeminism. Using empirical data from an exploratory investigation of entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia, we examine how women use digital technologies in the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities. Our findings reveal that women in Saudi Arabia use digital entrepreneurship to transform their embodied selves and lived realities rather than to escape gender embodiment as offered by the online environment.

We provide evidence that both human capital and R&D increase the likelihood that a firm will be a high-growth firm in the industry. However, different from human capital, being an R&D active firm also increases the probability of substantial decline or failure, underscoring the risky nature of innovation. Quantile regression results show that, different from R&D, human capital is growth-enhancing for all firms, hence also those located in the lower quantiles of the distribution of growth rates across firms.

A long-standing question in social science is to what extent differences in management cause differences in firm performance. To investigate this, the authors ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms, providing free consulting on modern management practices to a randomly chosen set of treatment plants and compared their performance to the control plants. They find that adopting these management practices had three main effects. First, it raised average productivity by 11 percent through improved quality and efficiency and reduced inventory. Second, it increased decentralization of decision making, as better information flow enabled owners to delegate more decisions to middle managers. Third, it increased the use of computers, necessitated by the data collection and analysis involved in modern management. Since these practices were profitable this raises the question of why firms had not adopted these before. Their results suggest that informational barriers were a primary factor in explaining this lack of adoption. Modern management is a technology that diffuses slowly between firms, with many Indian firms initially unaware of its existence or impact. Since competition was limited by constraints on firm entry and growth, badly managed firms were not rapidly driven from the market.

The eighteen business case studies complement both the theoretical and the other empirical work by providing detailed and recent insights on the adopted internationalisation strategies, and the implications for the international division of labour at the level of individual EU based ICT companies. The objective of the case studies is to illustrate and complement the theoretical and practical understanding developed in this study. The analyses mentioned above leads to insights mostly at the macro- and meso- level of countries and sectors, or to insight focussing on R&D as one business function indicated by patent applications. We have adopted a qualitative methodology to address geographical fragmentation (and organisational integration) of ICT activities at the micro-level, that is, the company level, but also below the level of a MNE, given that some of the case studies focus on a specific EU-based subsidiary of a multinational corporation.

Se discuten los hallazgos inferidos de la observación de cuatro redes productivas operantes en Colombia y dedicadas a la producción y comercialización de café, banano, flores y derivados de leche y carne. La pregunta investigativa que orientó este trabajo fue: ¿Qué aspectos son similares en el diseño de las organizaciones en red, operantes en Colombia e incluidas en este estudio? Para contestar esta pregunta, se aplicó la metodología de estudio comparativo de caso al análisis de información reunida mediante observación directa, entrevista a actores clave, revisión de documentos internos y evaluación de documentos de circulación pública. This paper discusses the inferred results upon observing four productive networks that operate in Colombia and dedicate their activities to the production and commercializing of coffee, flowers, and milk and meat derivatives. The question that oriented this research was: what aspects are similar in their design in the network organizations that operate in Colombia and are included in this study? In order to answer this question, the case comparative case study methodology was applied on the analysis of data that was gathered through direct observation, interviews with key members, revision of internal documents, and an evaluation of the documents of public circulation.