To introduce new products and processes, firms often acquire knowledge from other organizations. Drawing on social capital and transaction cost theory, we argue that not only is the impact of such acquisitions on the successful development of product and product innovations dependent on...

External knowledge acquisition represents a precondition for firms’ competitive advantage. However, young firms find it particularly difficult to gain access to external sources of knowledge: young firms suffer from a liability of newness by exhibiting significantly lower propensities to...

This paper introduces inter-sectoral technology-based linkages (or technological spillovers) in a empirical model of international market share dynamics. The Pavitt taxonomy is applied as a yardstick for interpreting the empirical results. In accordance with the criteria behind the taxonomy, we...

The paper investigates the relationship between human capital characteristics and firm performance in engineering consulting. Because general experience, firm-specific human capital and diversity carry specific costs and benefits we hypothesize curvilinear (taking inverted U-shapes) relations to...

The existing empirical evidence is somewhat inconclusive with respect to a number of the key predictions of the agency model. Although the reach of agency theory is considerably wider, the dominant portion of work has been taken up with examining the nature of the trade-off between risk and...

The paper explores firstly the impact of technological change on trade growth at the country level, using trade statistics and statistics on patenting activity in the US, across 20 countries for 17 manufacturing sectors. Secondly, using structural decomposition analysis, the paper examine...

Although there are several theories of growth of the firm, the literature is limited in two interrelated respects. First, empirical evidence does not match well theoretical predictions. Second, the firm growth literature does not address the structure of knowledge both in firms and sectors as...

This paper examines the factors that influence whether firms draw from universities in their innovative activities. The link between the universities and industrial innovation, and the role of different search strategies in influencing the propensity of firms to use universities is explored. The...

Recent theoretical and empirical analysis in the field of economic organisation has focussed almost exclusively on identifying organisational practices and complementarities between such practices, invariant to the type of activity in question. However, this paper takes its point of departure in...