Antje Fiedler

Assembling capabilities for innovation: Evidence from New Zealand SMEs

This article draws upon survey data from New Zealand small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to explore the relationship between training, collaboration and innovation performance. Based on the perspective that SME owner–managers attempt to marshal both internal and external capabilities to improve innovation outcomes, it shows that strategies which focus on internal capabilities (training) only have no tangible effect. SMEs benefit from different capability strategies depending on their age. For younger firms, accessing external resources (collaboration) has a positive effect, while older SMEs benefit from a combined strategy (collaboration and training). Training effects are context (e.g. industry or sector) dependent and contingent on a broader approach to innovation. Our findings also suggest that demographic characteristics of the owner–manager influence the capability assembling strategy and are therefore, an important contingency for the innovation performance of SMEs.

Liberalising the German Model: Institutional Change, Organisational Restructuring and Workplace Effects

Institutional change at supranational, European Union level affects national and firm level institutions in various ways. This article traces effects of liberalisation measures in the airport industry enacted in two airport firms in Germany. The study, based on qualitative empirical research, found that EU liberalisation facilitated company creation of subsidiaries (subsidiarisation) and elevated shareholder interest in corporate governance. These factors affected institutional practices and cultural norms within the German industrial context that in turn influenced significant alterations in employment and workplace relations. Considerable disruption of the German social partnership model of corporate governance and industrial relations was observed. However, in addition to patterns of convergence towards neoliberal practices and outcomes frequently observed in Anglo-Saxon systems, the study found some elements of effective retention of cultural institutional resources of the German model. Both ‘path departure’ and social embeddedness appear to coexist.

The European Company (SE): Power and participation in the multinational corporation

The European Company (Societas Europaea or SE) is a European multinational corporation, established under European Union regulations, intended to institutionalize transnational participation of employees and management in company decision-making. This article analyses a qualitative empirical investigation of the application of participation in European Companies. The experiences of firms adopting this corporate form show that contestability of participatory power is heightened, but its institutional legitimacy retained and diversely utilized. The data display a continuum of actor orientations, formal agreement regarding participation and effectiveness and transnational diffusion of participation. The utilization of this corporate form by labour and management actors is in general underdeveloped.

Overcoming the liability of outsidership in institutional voids: Trust, emerging goals, and learning about opportunities

Building on the complementarity of the revisited Uppsala model and effectual logic, this article examines the role of affective and cognitive trust for developing knowledge in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) internationalization in emerging markets. Drawing on qualitative interview data from New Zealand SMEs engaging with Chinese business partners, the article first shows that an overreliance on affective trust can result in a situation of ‘persistent mediation’, in which learning about opportunities is impaired. Second, utilization of the affordable loss principle and a focus on control facilitates relationship-specific knowledge, which may also lead to cognitive trust. However, cognitive trust does not necessarily transform in the substantive business market knowledge needed to overcome the liability of outsidership. Third, business market knowledge is advanced when partners mutually set goals and develop the opportunity, which potentially also fosters cognitive and affective trust.