Raquel Sanz-Valle

Innovation or imitation? The role of organizational culture

Purpose – Innovation is crucial for attaining a competitive advantage for companies. Innovation, versus imitation, motivates companies to launch new products and become pioneers on markets. Many factors have been shown to be determinants for supporting an organizational innovative orientation. One of them is organizational culture. The objective of this paper is to analyze the organizational culture that fosters or inhibits organizational innovation and imitation strategy.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a sample of 471 Spanish companies for examining the hypotheses. Using hierarchical multiple regression analysis, it relates the effect of organizational culture with an innovation strategy.Findings – The results confirm the hypotheses. The paper finds that organizational culture is a clear determinant of innovation strategy. Moreover, adhocracy cultures foster innovation strategies and hierarchical cultures promote imitation cultures.Research limitations/implications – The main limitations are...

Effects of training on business results1

Currently, there is general agreement about the importance of training as a tool to help companies in the development of sustainable competitive advantages based on their human resources. However, the investment of companies in training activities is still very low. Among other reasons, that is due to the fact that they do not evaluate the effects of training on performance and therefore they do not know its economic impact for the company. There is also a lack of academic research analysing that issue, mainly at the empirical level. This paper studies empirically the effects of training on performance (effectiveness and profitability) using a sample of 457 European SMEs (including Spanish companies).1 Our results show some evidence of significant relationships between training and performance.

Innovation and human resource management fit: an empirical study

Purpose – This study aims to analyse the relationship between innovation and human resource management (HRM) from an empirical perspective, attempting to establish whether innovation determines the firms HRM or conversely HRM influences the innovation level of the companyDesign/methodology/approach – Literature is reviewed from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. On the basis of this review, some research hypotheses are formulated. Finally, these hypotheses are empirically tested on a sample of Spanish firms.Findings – The results provide evidence for both hypotheses and offer more support for Schuler and Jacksons model than for Miles and Snows model. In accordance with the previous literature, that in order to affect employee behaviour – and consequently promote company objectives – firms must develop a bundle of internally consistent HRM practices. However, what is still unresolved is which HRM practices should be included in that system.Originality/value – Fills a gap in the literature, par...

Could HRM support organizational innovation

Nowadays, it has become clear that the capacity of organizations to innovate and manage their human resources can be sources of competitive advantage. Recently, literature also asserts a positive relationship between human resource management and innovation. However, very little empirical research has specifically addressed those relationships. Using structural equations modelling with data collected from 173 Spanish firms, this study analyses them. Our findings show that innovation contributes positively to business performance and that human resource management enhances innovation. Implications for both academics and managers as well as future research lines are discussed.

Linking organizational learning with technical innovation and organizational culture

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of organizational learning on technical innovation and the role of organizational culture as a determinant of the organizational learning processes.Design/methodology/approach – After reviewing the literature on organizational learning and its relationship with both, technical innovation and organizational culture, this paper analyzes those relationships using a sample of 451 firms.Findings – Findings reveal that organizational learning is positively associated with technical innovation and that organizational culture can foster both organizational learning and technical innovation but can also act as a barrier. Additionally, findings show that in order to enhance innovation neither a flexibility focus nor an external focus are enough. Both of them are necessary to characterize organizational culture.Research limitations/implications – The main limitations of this paper are the cross‐sectional design of the empirical research and the fact that d...

Human resource management and business strategy links: an empirical study

Over recent years there has been an increasing interest in the field of human resource management. Currently, the literature encourages the consideration of human resources as strategic factors, not only because they play important role in strategy implementation, also because they are beginning to be reckoned as sources of sustainable competitive advantage. Relationships between human resource management and strategy have been studied from different perspectives. This article focuses on one of them. It examines matches between human resource practices and types of business strategy. The question addressed is: do human resource management practices vary with business strategy? To answer this question, empirical research was developed. Using data collected from 200 Spanish companies, this paper demonstrates significant associations between some human resource practices and business strategy in companies. Reported results support some of the previously established relationships. Implications for future rese...

Studying the effect of HRM practices on the knowledge management process

Purpose – This paper aims to study the effect of HRM practices on the knowledge management process, focusing on HRM practices both in isolation and forming a knowledge‐oriented HR system.Design/methodology/approach – After reviewing the relevant literature, the paper empirically analyzes the relationship between knowledge‐oriented HR practices and the processes of knowledge acquisition, distribution, interpretation and storing, using a sample of 701 firms.Findings – Findings provide evidence of a positive relationship between the adoption of a knowledge‐oriented HR system and each of the knowledge management processes, but also show that the HRM practices comprising that system have different effects on the knowledge management processes.Research limitations/implications – The main limitations of this paper are the cross‐sectional design of the empirical research and the fact that data were collected from one source only.Practical implications – Findings can guide managers hoping to enhance the developmen...

Knowledge management practices for innovation: a multinational corporation’s perspective

– This paper aims to assess the importance of different knowledge management practices to promote organizational innovation in multinational companies. The links among internationalization, reverse knowledge transfer and social capital and organizational innovation are analyzed. , – Structural equation modeling was used to check the research hypotheses with a sample of 104 multinational companies. , – The results show that internalization has no direct effect on organizational innovation but a indirect effect trhrough the transfer of knowledge from external subsidiaries to the headquarter. Furthermore, this knowledge and other that comes from internal and external social capital is essential for the development of innovations. , – Self-reporting by the CEOs may be the most significant limitation, as a single key informant provided the data; multiple informants would enhance the validity of the research findings. A second limitation is the cross-sectional design of the research that does not allow observation of the short- and long-term impact of the relationships among the variables. , – Organizational innovation is not an easy task. However, those multinational companies which foster knowledge management practices that generate new knowledge from external subsidiaries, internal or external social relationships, will facilitate the generation of innovations. In consequence, these companies should foster the generation of knowledge from different sources. , – The focus of the study in this paper is on multinational companies and the possibility to acquire knowledge from different sources (inside organization, external local environment and international context). Specially, focus on the transfer of knowledge from subsidiaries to headquarters (reverse knowledge transfer), as it is insufficiently investigated by current literature.

Managing Human Resources in Order to Promote Knowledge Management and Technical Innovation

Recent literature has highlighted the importance of human resource management, knowledge management, and technical innovation as key elements for achieving competitive advantage. Furthermore, research has shown a positive relationship between these three variables. However, empirical research on this issue is still scarce. This paper analyzes those linkages using structural equation modeling with data collected from 373 Spanish firms. The findings show that there is a relationship among the variables, although it is more complex than described in previous studies.

Repatriates and reverse knowledge transfer in MNCs

Abstract There is widely held assumption that knowledge is one of the most important drivers of firm’s performance. Multinational companies (MNCs) have the potential advantage of acquiring and utilizing knowledge across borders. But for this potential advantage to become real, the knowledge generated in any of their units around the world should be transferred to their other units. This paper adopts an innovative approach for the study of intra-MNC knowledge transfer by focusing on the role of repatriates as transferors of knowledge from foreign subsidiaries to the headquearters, which is an under-researched topic. In particular, the paper studies the impact of repatriates’ abilities and motivation to share knowledge (disseminative capacity) on the transfer of knowledge from subsidiaries to headquarters (reverse knowledge transfer). In addition, the paper examines the determinants of repatriates’ disseminative capacity. After reviewing the relevant literature and proposing the hypotheses, this paper presents an empirical research with a sample of Spanish MNCs. The findings provide evidence that repatriates’ disseminative capacity is positively associated with reverse knowledge transfer. The paper also identifies some drivers of this: the knowledge the repatriates acquired during the expatriation and the firm’s international assignments policy.