Krzysztof Szczygielski

Innovation strategies and productivity in the Polish services sector

Industry and firm-level research into both innovation and productivity has long been limited to manufacturing. In this article we aim to contribute to the stream of literature that seeks to extend the scope of such investigations to the services sector. To this end we analyse the innovation strategies in several service sectors in Poland in 2006–08 and examine their relationship to productivity. Our results show that service firms differ considerably in their innovation strategies, but that most of those strategies lead to productivity gains.

External vs Internal Determinants of Firm Technology Strategy: Evidence from the Polish Services Sector

Differences in the growth of firms remain a major topic in economics and strategy research.In this paper we investigated the link between innovation performance and employment growth. First we discuss the problem from the theoretical point of view and then we analyze the relationship between innovation performance and the dynamics of employment in the Polish service firms in 2004-2009. Firms that introduced new services or marketing techniques experienced stronger growth. Process innovations contributed to employment reduction. Tellingly, this effect could only be observed in 2008-2009, a subperiod which saw the lowest levels of aggregate demand. This conclusion yields support to the presumption formulated by Pianta (2005) that the impact of innovation on employment growth depends on the macroeconomic situation.

Innovation and the growth of service companies: The variety of firm activities and industry effects

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between innovation performance and employment growth in firms by taking a closer look at specific innovation activities and industry effects in the context of the services sector. Firm-level CIS data on Polish services firms in 2004–2009 are analysed using robust M-estimation. The results indicate that the effects of product, process and organisational innovations depend strongly on the level of technological opportunities in the industry in question. Given the widely acknowledged role of marketing innovations in services, possible synergies between innovations in the form of new products and new marketing techniques are also analysed. We demonstrate that marketing innovations are conducive to firm growth if they complement product innovations, but they are less likely to foster growth when applied in isolation.

Are Unit Export Values Correct Measures of the Exports' Quality?

It has become common to measure the quality of exports using their unit export value (UEV). Applications of this method include studies of intra-industry trade (IIT) and analyses of industrial ‘competitiveness.’ This literature seems to assume that export quality and export price (the most natural interpretation of UEV) are not merely correlated but that they follow each other one-for-one. We put this assumption under scrutiny from both a theoretical and empirical point of view. In terms of theory, we formalize this assumption as a hypothesis of the proportionality of equilibrium prices and equilibrium qualities. We discuss several cases for which this hypothesis is theoretically doubtful (nonlinear utility and cost functions; strong and asymmetric horizontal product differentiation). We also suggest a method of verifying the hypothesis for cases in which it cannot be easily rejected theoretically. This method is then applied to German imports in the period of 1994–2009. We find that the implications of the proportionality hypothesis are largely contradicted by the data.

Innovation and the Growth of Service Firms: The Polish Case

Differences in the growth of firms remain a major topic in economics and strategy research.In this paper we investigated the link between innovation performance and employment growth. First we discuss the problem from the theoretical point of view and then we analyze the relationship between innovation performance and the dynamics of employment in the Polish service firms in 2004-2009. Firms that introduced new services or marketing techniques experienced stronger growth. Process innovations contributed to employment reduction. Tellingly, this effect could only be observed in 2008-2009, a subperiod which saw the lowest levels of aggregate demand. This conclusion yields support to the presumption formulated by Pianta (2005) that the impact of innovation on employment growth depends on the macroeconomic situation.

Innovation Strategies and Productivity in the Polish Services Sector in the light of CIS 2008

Industry - and firm-level research into both innovations and productivity has long been limited to manufacturing. With this paper, we aim to contribute to the stream of literature that aims at extending the scope of such investigations to the services industry. To this end we analyze the innovation strategies in several service sectors in Poland in 2008 and examine their relationship to productivity. Our results show that service firms differ considerably in their innovation strategies, but that most of those strategies lead to productivity gains.