Complementarities in organizational innovation practices: evidence from French industrial firms*

Caroline Mothe,Uyen T Nguyen-Thi,Phu Nguyen-Van

doi:10.1080/10438599.2014.949416

Abstract

Organizational innovation favours technological innovation. Yet the question of which organizational practices should be combined – that is, their compatibility – remains unanswered. This empirical investigation of patterns of complementarity considers three organizational practices: business practices, workplace organization, and external relations. Firm-level data drawn from the 2008 French Community Innovation Survey and supermodularity tests confirm the crucial role of organizational innovation in increasing firms’ innovation. The pattern of complementarity among organizational practices differs according to the type of innovation (i.e. product or process), as well as the type of measure used to assess technological innovation performance. These results highlight the complexity of managing organizational practices to encourage firm innovation.

Highlights

The importance of managing different types of resources has long been highlighted, such as by the resource-based view of the firm and evolutionary economic theory (e.g., Penrose 1959; Nelson and Winter 1982; Teece 1988)
Recent studies suggest that complementarities exist across various types of organizational innovation practices, such as workplace organization (Ichniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi 1997; Cappelli and Newmark 2001), human resource management (Laursen and Mahnke 2001), and external relations (Arora and Gambardella 1990). These alternative organizational practices have not been studied in combination, with one exception: Cozzarin and Percival (2006) consider the complementarities of organizational practices with novel strategies. We extend these prior contributions by investigating multiple complementarities across three types of organizational practices and their resultant effect on technological innovation performance
By studying the effect of complementarities among organizational practices on innovation performance, we argue that technological innovation performance can be improved by simultaneously certain types of organizational innovation practices simultaneously

Summary

Introduction

The importance of managing different types of resources has long been highlighted, such as by the resource-based view of the firm and evolutionary economic theory (e.g., Penrose 1959; Nelson and Winter 1982; Teece 1988). We extend these prior contributions by investigating multiple complementarities across three types of organizational practices (business practices, workplace organization, and external relations) and their resultant effect on technological innovation performance.

Results

Conclusion