Despite the existing contributions on the economic and social relevance of industrial clusters in the firms' internationalization, research on these topics is still scarce and, particularly, controversial at an empirical level. This study contributes to the extant literature on international development, proposing to explore the impact that industrial clusters and innovation activities exert in the most relevant temporal dimension of the firm's foreign expansion—internationalization speed (earliness and postentry speed). Further, this research seeks to ascertain whether the relationship between industrial clusters and internationalization speed is significantly different for low and high‐technology businesses. Based on a sample of 3,537 Portuguese firms, collected in the SABI database, the results suggest that firms belonging to industrial clusters and developing innovation activities tend to exhibit a higher postentry speed, not observing the same impact in terms of early internationalization. The findings also reveal that low‐technology firms have an additional incentive to become involved in industrial clusters, since these actions will be reflected to a greater extent in their postentry speed than those of high‐technology firms.
PurposeDrawing on the resource-based view (RBV) and knowledge-based view (KBV) theories, this study contributes to deepen the knowledge that corporate social responsibility (CSR) exerts on firms' innovation, considering the role played by cooperation. The research also seeks to ascertain the factors that influence the development of business cooperation.Design/methodology/approachThe database used is the Community Innovation Survey (CIS, 2014) applied in the European Union (EU) during the time period 2012–2014. A sample of 7083 Portuguese firms were analyzed through the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe results suggest that CSR positively relates with firms' innovation, and business cooperation partially mediates this relationship. The outcomes also reveal that investing in certain types of innovation activities increases the firms' willingness to cooperate.Originality/valueThe findings contribute to encourage an open innovation strategy as an easy and effective way to cope with rapid trends and changes, since it demonstrates the complementary between innovation and cooperation, as sources of value creation. From a triple bottom line (TBL) perspective, it also highlights that CSR must include social, economic and environmental initiatives, and should be a part of the firms' innovation strategy. As a result, managers who intend to contribute for society in the long term should plan, monitor and manage all CSR dimensions.
The extant literature shows that innovation emerges from an interorganizational process, where a division of labor (both exploitation and exploration related) occurs among the actors within the cluster. Clustered firms are ambidextrous when they balance innovative activities that exploit existing competencies and are open to new technological approaches through exploration. In this context, we are interested in the role of clusters as supportive structures creating an atmosphere that encourages the development of interorganizational relationships, which assume a key relevance in explaining the ambidexterity and innovation of firms within the cluster. The question is whether there is an ideal combination to compete today (exploitation) while preparing to compete tomorrow (exploration), and if the networks developed in an industrial cluster play a role on determining innovative performance. Therefore, this study contributes to deepen the knowledge about the role of ambidexterity and network clustering on innovation. Specifically, by presenting a framework that explores the influence of external stakeholders and other clustered agents in the response of ambidextrous organizations to the challenges raised by environmental changes, we extend our discussion to a higher level of abstraction showing how ambidexterity can be the “black box” that connects the entrepreneurship, management, and innovation fields. The analysis of 1467 Portuguese firms suggests that network clustering has a direct positive impact on innovative performance, but also an indirect, mediated effect through exploration. Additionally, we found that a combination of exploitation and exploration (i.e., combined ambidexterity), and the trade-off between the two dimensions (i.e., imbalanced ambidexterity), leads to better innovation in agglomeration contexts. Our results, therefore, provide evidence that ambidexterity is the key to manage innovation strategic entrepreneurship’s tensions but, the way in which they are managed, is contingent on the clustered firms’ ability or inability to simultaneously pursue both exploitation and exploration.
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