Measuring the impact of innovative human capital on small firms' propensity to innovate

By Helen McGuirk, Helena Lenihan, M. Hart. 2015

345 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The ability to identify and evaluate the competitive advantage of employees’ transferable and innovative characteristics is of importance to firms and policymakers. This research extends the standard measure of human capital by developing a unique and far reaching concept of Innovative Human Capital and emphasises its effect on small firm innovation and hence growth (jobs, sales and productivity). This new Innovative Human Capital concept encapsulates four elements: education, training, willingness to change in the workplace and job satisfaction to overcome the limitations of measurements used previously. An augmented innovation production function is used to test the hypothesis that small firms who employ managers with Innovative Human Capital are more likely to innovate. There is evidence from the results that Innovative Human Capital may be more valuable to small firms (i.e. less than 50 employees) than larger-sized firms (i.e. more than 50 employees). The research expands innovation theory to include the concept of Innovative Human Capital as a competitive advantage and determinant of small firm innovation; and distinguishes Innovative Human Capital as a significant concept to consider when creating public support programmes for small firms.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b5971abacf9d57ebbcda25f75949a830d939ddb1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Helen McGuirk
2. Anders Dysvik
3. Kevin J. Murphy
4. Helena Lenihan

In Management of Technology and Innovation

1. Helen McGuirk
2. Miha Škerlavaj
3. Helena Lenihan
4. Matej Cerne

Citations in the corpus

• Driving innovation: Public policy and human capital (2019, background): “There is considerable evidence that innovation and the success of organizations, require behaviors that go beyond the usual role requirements of jobs and depend substantially on employees’ motivation and willingness to engage in these behaviors (Chiu, 2018; McGuirk et al., 2015; Shalley, 1995; Menol”
• Firm-level human capital and innovation: Evidence from China (2020, neutral): “that GM’s tenure has a positive effect on R&D expenditure; while Hambrick and Fukutomi (1991) found that a GM tends to make fewer changes in strategy as the tenure increases.(27) The GM’s tenure appears to have different effect in the two datasets: positive and”
• The role of multilevel synergistic interplay among team mastery climate, knowledge hiding, and job characteristics in stimulating innovative work behavior (2017, background): “…managers and immediate supervisors have the power to mitigate the negative effects of knowledge hiding on IWB by shaping the innovation climate through supportive actions and attitudes to innovation (cf. McGuirk et al., 2015), as well by inducing particular motivational-climate conditions at work.”