The influence of different knowledge workers on innovation strategy and product development performance in small and medium-sized enterprises

Andrew Kach, Arash Azadegan and Stephan M. Wagner

International Journal of Production Research, 2015, vol. 53, issue 8, 2489-2505

Abstract: Despite significant interest on the topic of knowledge workers, the understanding of how they influence certain aspects of firm innovativeness remains limited. In particular, while different types of knowledge workers exist, their particular synergistic effects on new and improved product development within smaller firms has received less attention. Drawing on the knowledge-based view (KBV), we posit that innovation strategy plays an instrumental role in linking the effects of knowledge workers, thereby leading to greater product development outcomes from different types of knowledge workers. Moreover, some suggest that beyond a certain point, there is a diminishing return to increasing the proportion of knowledge workers in an organisation; however, the basis of this finding is within larger firms. This study investigates whether high-level (e.g. engineers and scientists) and low-level (e.g. technicians and machine operators) knowledge workers exert varying effects on performance in terms of new and improved product development. Data from 205 small and medium-sized high-tech manufacturing firms provide support that distinguishing among types of knowledge workers is important given that they impact new and improved product development differently. Furthermore, innovation strategy plays a synergistic role, positively mediating the effects of different types of knowledge workers on innovation outcomes.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2014.975856 (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:tprsxx:v:53:y:2015:i:8:p:2489-2505

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TPRS20

DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2014.975856

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Research is currently edited by Professor A. Dolgui

More articles in International Journal of Production Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().