دانلود رایگان مقاله شناسایی مسیر پیکربندی نوآوری SMEs تحلیل مقایسه کیفی مجموعه فازی

abstract

Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study investigates the conditions leading to a higher level of innovation. More specifically, the study explores the impact of inter-organisational knowledge transfer networks and organisations' internal capabilities on different types of innovation in Small to Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) in the high-tech sector. A survey instrument was used to collect data from a sample of UK SMEs. The findings show that although individual factors are important, there is no need for a company to perform well in all the areas. The fsQCA, which enables the examination of the impacts of different combinations of factors, reveals that there are a number of paths to achieve better incremental and radical innovation performance. Companies need to choose the one that is closest to their abilities and fits best with their resources.

6. Discussion

As explained earlier, there are several prior studies that document different factors impacting on an organisation's radical and incremental innovation performance. However, these studies focus on the influence of individual factors on different types of innovation performance. They implicitly imply, therefore, that organisations should seek to perform well in all the areas to be able to achieve the anticipated outcome. However, such a performance in all the areas is unlikely for enterprises, specifically for SMEs, due to their limited resources. The fsQCA enables researchers to understand which factors are relevant to achieving the desired outcome and what combinations of these factors will lead to that outcome (Fiss, 2011). Ganter and Hecker (2014) argue that fsQCA is particularly suitable for configurational analysis of organisational innovation. Organisations are generally only able to focus their expertise and resources on some of these factors and therefore it is important to understand what combination of these characteristics can assist them to achieve their goals. This study looks at different configurations of these factors and identifies the different paths that can lead to higher radical or incremental innovation performance. In addition to that, this research is one of the few studies that applies the fsQCA method to network characteristics.