Technological competencies and firm performance: Analyzing the importance of internal and external competencies

Markus Grillitsch and Magnus Nilsson

No 2013/24, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the relationship between technological competencies (TC) and firm performance. Theoretically, the importance of TC is well established and widely accepted. Therefore, it is surprising that a number of empirical studies have been unable to confirm a substantial positive relationship between TC and firm performance. We identify two major reasons for this: [i] affected by the availability and choice of indicators existing studies are often biased towards large firms; and [ii] they frequently do not consider both internal and potential access to firm-external TC. This paper discusses conceptually the interplay between firm-internal and firm-external TC as well as the mediating effect of firm size. These relationships are then analyzed empirically using Swedish micro data on 15,682 firms in 290 Swedish municipalities. Novel indicators based on occupational statistics are combined with measures of time-distance accessibility to study internal and external TC. The results provide evidence for a positive relationship between firm growth and TC. In particular, the combination of firm-internal and firm-external competencies seems to be conducive for growth. Lastly, our study suggests that firm size is an important factor to further our understanding about these relationships. Based on this we identify a number of future research questions to be addressed.

Keywords: technological competencies; firm performance; accessibility; knowledge; innovation; geography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L25 O18 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2013-09-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-ent, nep-geo, nep-sbm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://wp.circle.lu.se/upload/CIRCLE/workingpapers/201324_Grillitsch_Nilsson.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Technological Competencies and Firm Performance: Analyzing the Importance of Internal and External Competencies (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2013_024

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Torben Schubert ().