The cluster is not flat. Uneven impacts of brokerage roles on the innovative performance of firms

Abstract

This paper investigates whether and to what extent individual firms improve their innovation from behaving as brokers connecting other actors in the Spanish ceramic tile cluster. The effects of the brokerage roles are analyzed for different innovation levels by means of quantile regressions. Finally, we speculate about the indirect and interactive effects of the distinct individual organization attributes and these benefits. Results show that brokerage activities unevenly influence the broker's innovative performance. In addition, the intensity of the impact varies for different innovation levels and the firm's absorptive capacity moderate the final effect of acting as a broker.

Explaining technological innovation of the clustered firms: Internal and relational factors

“…Earlier research has been quite extensive in analysing the individual net effect of several antecedents such as the role of institutions (McDonald, Tsagdis, and Huang, 2006;Suchman, 1995), vertical and horizontal relationships (Boari, Odorici, and Zamarian, 2003;Martínez-Cháfer, Molina-Morales, and Peiró-Palomino, 2018;Tomlinson, 2010), and internal resources such as absorptive capacity (Barney, 1991;Cohen and Levinthal, 1994;Zahra and George, 2002). In some cases, double interactions (Boari, Molina-Morales, and Martínez-Cháfer, 2017) and even triple interactions (Tomás-Miquel, Molina-Morales, and Expósito-Langa, 2019) have also been analysed despite the fact that their interpretation can sometimes be complex.…”

Everything must change for us to remain the same. Resilience in the face of disruptive innovations in industrial districts

“…This approach considers the heterogeneity of ID firms in terms of specialization and competitive ability, which is increasingly relevant in districts. (Giuliani, 2011;Grashof, 2021;Hervas-Oliver et al, 2018b;Martínez-Cháfer et al, 2018).…”

Innovativeness and performance: the joint effect of relational trust and combinative capability

“…Absorptive capacity is the ability of a firm to recognize, assimilate and apply the value of new information for commercial purposes (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). This concept has been the subject of much attention in the literature due to its importance for capturing and benefiting from knowledge (Mart ınez-Ch afer et al, 2018;Medase and Basara, 2019). Zahra and George (2002) formulated a construct of absorptive capacity with two components: potential absorptive capacity, which includes acquisition and assimilation of knowledge, and realized absorptive capacity, which includes transformation and exploitation of knowledge.…”