 Building small firm performance through intellectual capital development: Exploring innovation as the “black box”William C. McDowell, Whitney O. Peake, LeAnne Coder and Michael L. Harris Journal of Business Research, 2018, vol. 88, issue C, 321-327 Abstract: Innovation seems to be a fundamental requirement for the growth and sustainability of small businesses. While previous research revealed a strong correlation between intellectual capital and performance, the role of intellectual capital in facilitating the innovativeness and performance of a firm has not been thoroughly examined in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) context. This study examines the role of innovativeness in the intellectual capital and organizational performance relationship using a sample of small firms. The results of a survey conducted on 460 small business owners indicate a positive relationship between two components of intellectual capital, human capital and organizational capital, and organizational performance. Further analysis finds that innovativeness partially mediates the relationship between intellectual capital and organizational performance. Our findings indicate that efficiently and effectively organized firms can leverage well skilled and innovative employees to achieve the best performance through innovation. Keywords: Innovation; Intellectual capital; Small business performance; SME (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:88:y:2018:i:c:p:321-327 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.01.025 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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