How cluster membership places the mediatior effect of internal resources on the association between KIBS and the growth of NIFs

Recently, network literature has considered the crucial importance of the resources which firm obtains through its network of external relationships. Specifically, this paper analyzes if the mediator effect of the internal resources on the association between Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and the growth of the New Innovative Firms (NIFs) is moderated by the belonging of the firm to an industrial cluster. The paper presents several contributions. First, this research shows like firms with higher internal resources exploit better the external resources and enhancing firm's performance. In this way we integrate both, network strategic perspective (external resources represented by the KIBS) and those authors from Resource-Based View, giving priority to internal resources. Moreover, we prove like the moderator role played internal resources is not constant on the contrary is changing when firm belong to an industrial cluster. Additionally, we consider as a contribution the application in this context of the particular and new analysis techniques to combine mediator and moderator effects as it is suggested in Preacher et al., (2007).