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Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the educational level and diversity of a firm's top management team (TMT), moderated by strategic consensus, influence its innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach -- Using Poisson regression analysis, the proposed models were tested on 97 innovative Spanish firms selected from the Dun and Bradstreet database of 2000. Findings -- Results show that a higher educational level in the TMT has a positive and direct effect on innovation performance, while functional diversity and diversity in TMT tenure have a direct and negative effect. However, in a situation of strategic consensus in the TMT, the relationship between functional diversity and innovation is positive. Originality/value -- The paper makes several contributions to previous research. First, few studies have considered the influence of the characteristics and composition of the TMT on the organization's innovation performance. Second, this paper responds to the calls of researchers to enrich the upper echelon theory by considering strategic consensus as a process of interaction between the members of the TMT that modifies the relationship between TMT diversity and the firm's innovation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish social economy enterprises (SEE), like capital-based ones, have been facing a general economic crisis since 2008. SEE in the Murcia region are no exception. They are mainly small and mediumsized companies and because of their lack of size and structure they face considerable competitive difficulties in fighting this situation. This paper is based on a survey of 102 social economy enterprises in the Murcia Region, essentially labour companies and cooperatives in the service and industrial sectors, which was conducted in early 2010. To examine the situation in which companies from these sectors - mostly micro-enterprises - find themselves, information was collected on their main ratios in 2009, their expectations and their assessment of the competitive context and the main difficulties they face in the current situation of economic and social crisis. The extensive questionnaire made it possible to classify these enterprises into four types, based on the evolution of their main economic ratios (jobs, sales, investment and profits), and in a second stage, to consider the relation with whether or not the companies had adopted active innovation strategies and strategic planning. This made it possible to define the companies that had been able to improve or at least maintain the levels of their principal ratios even in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and to explain the influence of representative variables of human capital and structural capital on the creation of business value. Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory analysis was initially performed on the degree to which firms actually used human and structural capital indicators, through a survey sent out to Spanish firms with a staff of 25 employees or more. Subsequently, by means of an explanatory analysis, the relationship was studied between the use made of the aforementioned indicators and a set of variables selected as representative of value creation. The information on value creation was taken from the Sistema de Análisis de Balances Ibéricos (SABI-AMADEUS) database. Moreover, in an attempt to corroborate the results of this explanatory analysis, a further independent variable was simultaneously introduced taken from the financial statements held on the same database and applied to the same sample of firms; known as the value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC), it analyses value creation efficiency. Findings – The explanatory analysis of multiple lineal correlations and regressions allows us to confirm the positive relation that exists between the use of human and structural capital indicators, and value creation measured by sales growth. Simultaneously, higher levels of the VAIC, in particular for the component that refers to the sum of the coefficient of human capital and structural capital, are also related to improvements in competitiveness reflected through an increase in sales figures. Research limitations/implications – Despite having identified a relation between intellectual capital and value creation, the study finds no evidence of a significant relationship between the use of human capital and structural capital indicators and dependent variables other than sales growth, such as return on assets (ROA) or productivity. The authors would have preferred to have obtained information from a larger number of firms, which would perhaps have contributed to finding new significant relations. This limitation suggests that further research is needed, such as carrying out large-scale longitudinal studies using panel data analysis. Originality/value – This analysis has a dual perspective based on observations taken from a survey and economic-financial analysis. It is a novel study in the Spanish context given that the analysis of aspects related to intellectual capital have on numerous occasions centred on large and/or quoted firms in that country, solely using information taken from secondary sources (databases). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the relationship between technological capabilities and firm performance. To achieve this objective, firstly, it is proposed a typology of technological capabilities and, secondly, it is defined a model where different technological strategies and industry structure are both taken into account. The empirical test was developed in the Spanish biotechnology industry. Results show that not all technological capabilities have the same effects on firm performance, as the strategic potential of such capabilities notably depends on competitive conditions. These results justify that certain traditional evaluation criteria for resources and capabilities can be criticized, and the need of contingent views to analyze the role of technological knowledge in firm success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The achievement of competitiveness advantages by companies is something vital for their survival and success. With this paper we try to know which factors explain the competitive success of SMEs, using a sample of 1.201 Spanish enterprises that develop their activity in the industrial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]