The evolution of economic activity in a knowledge economy [1] shows the importance of knowledge or intellectual assets as key production factors in a firm's survival and success. This environment is evolving towards a new competitive arena, whereby firms are engaged in the continuous renewal of their competitive advantages through continuous innovations and the development of new knowledge and capabilities [2], [3] and [4]. In this sense, one of the best ways for a firm to achieve a competitive advantage comes directly from continuous technological innovation. Following de Brentani, Kleinschmidt and Salomo, a firm's new product development strategy is a primary determinant of the firm's performance [5]. Furthermore, the firm's ability to continuously innovate its products and knowledge assets – as a dynamic capability – is essential for its future success [6] and [7].
Although numerous efforts have been undertaken to understand the technological innovation phenomenon from an external perspective [8] and [9], further efforts focused on internal analysis are needed to fully understand this complex business activity. As Nonaka and Takeuchi highlighted, the innovation phenomenon is a knowledge-intensive business process that includes the organisation's members and their relationships and other forms of collective organisational knowledge, context and information as well as their effective implementation, which form the basis of technological innovations [10]. Subramaniam and Youndt remarked that technological innovations are related to a firm's intellectual capital (human, structural, and social) endowments [11]. Empirical studies (e.g., [4], [12] and [13]) have tested this argument. Although the basic linkage between firm knowledge and innovation is convincing on the whole, more remains to be understood about its complex nature [11].
Taking into account the previous arguments from an integrative view of ‘A Knowledge-Based View of the Firm’ [10] and [14] and ‘An Intellectual Capital-Based View of the Firm’ [13], our research attempts to examine (i) how human and technological knowledge assets could play a crucial role in the technological innovations in high and medium-high technology manufacturing firms in Spain, and (ii) the moderating role of culture on innovation with regard to the aforementioned relationships.
This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a review of the existing literature to outline the theoretical foundations of this study and explains its conceptual framework. In Section 3, the model of analysis and the hypotheses are discussed. Section 4 presents the methodology used in this research, describing the sample, the variables and their measurement properties. Section 5 shows the results from several linear regression models. Finally, Section 6 discusses the empirical results, proposes some future research directions, and reviews the limitations of this study.
One of the challenges in the field of technological innovation management lies in the empirical exploration of the complex nature of this key business activity, with the KBV and the ICBV serving as useful frameworks for analysing this phenomenon.
Despite the fact that knowledge assets and intellectual capital are proposed as the main sources of a firm's product innovations (e.g., [10] and [11]), it is necessary to develop a deeper understanding of the complex relationships among these characteristics because large gaps remain in this research field. Furthermore, the scarcity of empirical research using the aforementioned frameworks demands new and exploratory theoretical and empirical work and is the reason this study has focused on contributing empirical data and results on the subject.
In line with previous works (e.g., [4], [9] and [11]), the results obtained show the positive and direct effects of human capital, technological knowledge assets, and innovation culture on product innovation. More specifically, the most significant effects on product innovation are exerted by human capital, followed by innovation culture and technological knowledge assets. These results corroborate previous arguments that have appeared in the literature [11], [49] and [54].
Additionally, this investigation has attempted to make another contribution to the technology and innovation management field by proposing and testing the moderating role of innovation culture on the relationships between human capital, technological knowledge assets, and product innovation. This type of moderating effect may help to generate a better understanding of the complex nature of the product innovation process. The results indicate the existence of a statistically significant moderating role of innovation culture only on the relationship between human capital and product innovation. This result corroborates the previous empirical results obtained by Elenkov and Manev concerning the moderating role of sociocultural context on the relationship between management leadership and organisational innovation [89].
Hence, the influence of innovation culture is evident when human resources are considered one of the primary internal factors in product innovation development, thereby improving that relationship. The reason for this finding may be the fact that employees will better exploit their skills, knowledge or experience if they feel trust, common values, and support and if they are encouraged to be innovative. Furthermore, an innovation culture provides opportunities for employees to be involved in decision making because in an innovation culture, employees are encouraged to communicate their opinions and ideas openly [62]. To that end, according to Prajogo and Ahmed [61], firms should create and maintain an environment in which innovation is supported so that personnel are not only motivated to innovate but also ‘can’ innovate.
Innovation culture does not play a moderating role when we analyse technological knowledge assets, most likely because the characteristics of an innovation culture are associated more with human and social issues and motivations than with the technological tools used by a firm. Thus, contrary to what we discussed, and following some of Vaccaro et al.'s [20] ideas, an innovation culture does not affect the use of knowledge management tools with regard to technological knowledge. The reason for this result may be the fact that high-technology firms work continually with patents and/or non-legally protected knowledge, and an innovation culture therefore does not influence its improved utilisation.
According to Kfir [65] and O'Regan et al. [53], there are three main dimensions of the organisational environment that enable innovation: culture, leadership, and systems processes. Unlike in those studies, we did not consider two of these dimensions when we analysed the relationship between technology-based assets and product innovation, which may be one of the reasons our premise was not supported.
Regarding the differences found for innovation culture as a moderating variable, depending on the context within which the organisation operates, certain types of corporate cultures are more successful than others [57] and [59]. Furthermore, these studies distinguish between an adhocracy culture and a hierarchy culture. The former represents a climate of creativity, and the latter represents a form of order, rules and regulations. Thus, whereas the relationship between human capital and product innovation may require an innovation culture, the relationship between technological knowledge assets and product innovation may require the use of complex rules and procedures, considering that multiple cultures may exist within different parts of the firm. In this way, it is possible to believe that R&D processes are more formalised and play an important role within the implantation stage, whereas at the beginning of the process, the most relevant component is the employees' creativity, which is necessary for generating and promoting new ideas in an innovation culture [61] and [90].
Based on the reasoning above, managers, executives and practitioners in high and medium-high technology manufacturing firms may be able to acquire ideas about intangible factors in an organisation, such as human and technological knowledge assets, that may help the firm to achieve product innovation. More specifically, this research considers an innovative culture to be a key organisational capability that helps a firm perform better; therefore, it is necessary to focus on developing an adequate environment within a firm that promotes risk, innovative capacities, and personal motivation to create new knowledge. Moreover, through the measurement scale suggested by this study, practitioners are able to identify the intangible resources and capabilities of their firms with the aim of assessing the use of their existing assets for future needs.
Several limitations, which present opportunities for future studies, should be taken into account. First, the empirical results are not generalisable because they were obtained from a small number of homogeneous industries: Spanish high and medium-high technology manufacturing firms. For this reason, the implications for managerial practise may only be applicable to these industries. However, our population and sample were framed following the recommendations of Newbert [66] and Rouse and Daellenbach [69] and because of different industrial settings and/or activities, knowledge needs and usage may be different; in this case, it would be an applicable issue, particularly within the services sectors. Further research from other industrial settings could replicate these results.
The second limitation stems from the use of a Likert scale questionnaire, which has an inherent risk of subjective answers from the respondents. However, this method has been applied in many Management studies to measure intangible resources because specific questions are more suitable for collecting data that is more representative of a specific and internal phenomenon, compared with proxies obtained from databases. Nevertheless, despite having applied Harman's single factor test to check for common method variance (because of the single respondent problem), it would be important in the future to use different sources of data to minimise common method bias [91]. This issue may be considered a limitation according to Malhotra et al. [92: 1.866], who assert that “although researchers generally agree that CMV has the potential to affect the results of a single-method study, no consensus exists about the seriousness of such biases”.
Finally, this study did not take into account the dynamism of factors that affect firms or how these factors change within the firm as time goes by. This limitation is a consequence of using a cross-sectional survey instead of conducting a longitudinal study.
