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The few studies that analyze the impact of a combined strategy of innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm performance mostly focus on financial performance. In contrast, the current study considers the simultaneous impact of technological innovations (product and process) and CSR on firm growth, which provides a measure of medium-term economic performance. With a sample of 213 firms and a two-step procedure, this study reveals the differentiated effects of strategic versus responsive CSR behavior on the two technological innovation types, as well as the effects of the two innovation types on growth. The findings thus indicate that firms with strategic CSR achieve growth through both their product and their process innovations.

PurposeThis paper aims to provide evidence of the major role of non‐technological activities in the innovation process. It seeks to highlight the effects of marketing and organizational innovation strategies on technological innovation performance.Design/methodology/approachThe paper tests theoretical hypotheses on a sample of 555 firms of the Fourth Community Innovation Survey (CIS 4) in 2006 in Luxembourg. Data are analyzed through a generalized Tobit model.FindingsEvidence is found to support the impact of innovation in the marketing and organization fields on a firm's capacity to innovate, but not on the innovative performance. The paper also statistically shows that the effects of non‐technological innovation differ depending on the phase of the innovation process.Research limitations/implicationsThe causal link and the question of time frame between the various innovations could be further investigated, especially through longitudinal studies. Further research should also focus on the differences between large versus small firms, and service versus industrial firms.Practical implicationsThe effects of non‐technological innovation are not the same according to whether the firm is in the first step of the innovation process (i.e. being innovative), or in a later step (i.e. innovative performance). Managers should be aware of these various effects in order to efficiently adopt non‐technological innovation strategies.Originality/valueFew works have taken into account the role of other innovative strategies such as marketing and organization. As far as is known, this is the first study based on recent CIS data that looks at the interrelations between different types of innovation.

Both corporate social responsibility and diversity influence firms' innovation, yet their relationship and links to innovation remain uncertain, especially among small to medium-sized enterprises. Relying on strategic and institutional CSR perspectives and a value-in-diversity approach, this study examines the mediating roles of gender and nationality diversity on the CSR-innovation link at the organizational level. With a sample of 1,348 SMEs from Luxembourg, the results show that strategic CSR can promote both types of diversity, but only nationality diversity triggers technological innovation. Nationality diversity emerges as a partial mediator of the relationship between CSR and SMEs' technological innovation. Thus, strategic CSR, through the genuine pursuit of such diversity, can help SMEs attain positive returns on their product or process innovation. These results have important theoretical and managerial implications.

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Boundary spanner relational behavior is considered critical in the successful management of buyer-supplier relationships and may help avoiding high costs of more formal inter-organizational controls. Yet, the influence of partners' boundary spanners on effective supply chain collaboration has had much less inquiry than the influence of broader inter-organizational controls. We use survey data of 200 buyer-supplier relationships to examine how these individual and organizational control mechanisms influence the performance effects of interfirm collaborations that vary in scope of activities undertaken. Findings show that collaboration scope as well as boundary spanner relational behavior and inter-organizational controls are positively associated with performance. The effect of collaboration scope on firm performance, however, also depends on both mechanisms but in opposite directions: while its influence on performance is enhanced by inter-organizational controls, relational behavior of partners' boundary spanners has a negative moderating effect, indicating that such behavior contributes more to the effective management of collaborations of narrow scope than those of broader scope.

International audienceRecent literature explores the determinants of environmental innovations (EI) but rarely addresses obstacles to these innovations. To our knowledge, no previous study accounts for antecedents of EI to explore the various perceived barriers to EI for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Noting the importance of SMEs in European economies, this article identifies the extent to which SMEs perceive barriers to environmental innovations, considering their type, number, and intensity. With a merged data set of 435 French SMEs, we investigate different perceptions of environmentally innovative SMEs, compared with those of technologically innovative SMEs and non-innovative ones, using a multiple treatment model that integrates the antecedents. We thereby analyze SME CEO's perceptions of barriers to EI. The barriers are not only more numerous but also more important for SMEs that engage in environmental innovation activity compared with those that have introduced only technological innovation or those that do not undertake any innovation activity