How do employee training and knowledge stocks affect product innovation?

Yannis Caloghirou, Ioannis Giotopoulos, Efthymia Korra and Aggelos Tsakanikas

Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2018, vol. 27, issue 4, 343-360

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to explore how interactions of knowledge flows and knowledge stocks could shape firms’ innovative performance. Knowledge flows are measured on the grounds of human resource training practices while different levels and forms of knowledge stocks (i.e. educational attainment, exporting activity, and firm age) are considered. We make use of two-period panel probit regressions and a rich data survey of the 524 largest Greek manufacturing firms conducted in two waves (2011 and 2013). Our findings suggest that the beneficial effects of knowledge flows strengthen when knowledge stocks accumulated by employees’ education and firm age are low. When knowledge stocks are limited, knowledge flows can act as a bridge for product innovation. On the contrary, when knowledge stocks are high, higher investments in knowledge flows may lead to diminishing returns and, thus, to decreased innovation performance beyond a certain point.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10438599.2017.1362796 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:ecinnt:v:27:y:2018:i:4:p:343-360

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GEIN20

DOI: 10.1080/10438599.2017.1362796

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Innovation and New Technology is currently edited by Professor Cristiano Antonelli

More articles in Economics of Innovation and New Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().