Innovation through R&D activities in the European context: Antecedents and consequences

Urbano, D; Turro, A; Aparicio, S

Abstract

Despite the fact that the determinants and the consequences of R&D activities have been extensively studied in previous research, further efforts to integrate disparate streams of literature might bring new insights into innovation decision-making by firms. In particular, this article studies the simultaneous effects that a set of factors (at both company and environmental levels of analysis) have on R&D activity, which explain firm growth. A two-stage probit least squares (2SPLS) estimation is applied to data from the EU-EFIGE/Bruegel-UniCredit dataset for seven European countries for the years 2007-2009. The main findings show that not all the R&D determinants lead to firm growth. In particular, R&D activities are affected by the employment of a significant number of foreign executives, a higher percentage of employees with fixed-term contracts, appropriate labour regulations and access to employees who have received external training, all of which are positively related to firm growth. Based on these results, policy and practical implications to improve firms’ performances are discussed.

Citation

Urbano, D., Turro, A., & Aparicio, S. (2020). Innovation through R&D activities in the European context: Antecedents and consequences. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 45(5), 1481-1504. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-019-09752-x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 14, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Sep 17, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020-10
• Deposit Date: Sep 22, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 17, 2020
• Journal: Journal of Technology Transfer
• Print ISSN: 0892-9912
• Electronic ISSN: 1573-7047
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1481-1504
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-019-09752-x
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1320896