IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ujbmxx/v61y2023i4p1583-1610.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Process innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises: The critical roles of external knowledge sourcing and absorptive capacity

Author

Listed:
  • Omid Aliasghar
  • Arash Sadeghi
  • Elizabeth L. Rose

Abstract

Although previous studies have contributed substantially to our understanding of the role of external collaboration on product innovation in the context of high-tech industries in developed countries, there has been limited attention to the role of knowledge search on process innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in extreme institutional environments. Drawing on the open innovation and absorptive capacity literatures, two key findings emerge from our study of 124 SMEs operating in the automotive industry. First, we find that external knowledge-search breadth, but not depth, is related to the development of process innovation. Second, process innovation is positively related to performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Omid Aliasghar & Arash Sadeghi & Elizabeth L. Rose, 2023. "Process innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises: The critical roles of external knowledge sourcing and absorptive capacity," Journal of Small Business Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 61(4), pages 1583-1610, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ujbmxx:v:61:y:2023:i:4:p:1583-1610
    DOI: 10.1080/00472778.2020.1844491
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00472778.2020.1844491
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00472778.2020.1844491?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rosana Fuentes-Fernández & Eduardo Sánchez-García & Javier Martínez-Falcó & Bartolomé Marco-Lajara, 2024. "Uncovering external factors that influence the acquisition of knowledge for innovative purposes," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 1-28, September.
    2. Duc Anh Nguyen & Liliana Mitkova, 2024. "Recent research trends in open innovation in SMEs: a bibliometric literature review," Post-Print hal-04712830, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ujbmxx:v:61:y:2023:i:4:p:1583-1610. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ujbm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.