Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aal/abbswp/99-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Firm Growth from a Knowledge Structure Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Keld Laursen
  • Volker Mahnke
  • Per Vejrup-Hansen
Abstract
Although there are several theories of growth of the firm, the literature is limited in two interrelated respects. First, empirical evidence does not match well theoretical predictions. Second, the firm growth literature does not address the structure of knowledge both in firms and sectors as well as knowledge flows between them. Based on existing theoretical and empirical literature, the paper outlines an ‘appreciative’ theory of firm growth and presents new testable hypotheses to inform present and future empirical research. The paper seeks to address this gap by analysing not only levels of human capital, but also its composition both on a firm and sector level. A key departure from earlier approaches is the inclusion of the role of ‘knowledge structures’ played in the growth of the firm. In this context make a distinction between (a) levels of human capital available to firms, (b) the composition of various kinds of human capital (‘firm- specific’, ‘industry-specific’, and ‘general knowledge’) contained, and (c) the diversity of knowledge domains represented to characterise the knowledge structure of firms. In addition, we present our first empirical results, using the knowledge structure approach. In the first part of our empirical analysis we find – while controlling for intial size and industry affiliation – that the availability of a high fraction of employees with higher education within each establishment (an aspect of ‘general kowledge’), is in general conducive to establishment growth. In the second part of the empirical analysis, we find important sectoral differences with respect to the ability of the level of formal education to explain firms growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Keld Laursen & Volker Mahnke & Per Vejrup-Hansen, 1999. "Firm Growth from a Knowledge Structure Perspective," DRUID Working Papers 99-11, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:aal:abbswp:99-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://wp.druid.dk/wp/19990011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicolai J. Foss, 1996. "Firms, Incomplete Contracts and Organizational Learning," DRUID Working Papers 96-2, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    2. Peter Maskell, 1996. "Localised Low-tech Learning in the Furniture Industry," DRUID Working Papers 96-11, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lee, Keun & Kim, Byung-Yeon, 2009. "Both Institutions and Policies Matter but Differently for Different Income Groups of Countries: Determinants of Long-Run Economic Growth Revisited," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 533-549, March.
    2. Jung Hun Yang & Dick Ettema & Koen Frenken & Frank van Oort & Evert-Jan Visser, 2011. "A geosimulation model of economic activity for supporting spatial planning and economic policy," ERSA conference papers ersa10p1016, European Regional Science Association.
    3. A. Arrighetti & S. Curatolo & A. Lasagni, 2008. "Determinanti della domanda di laureati nell'industria manifatturiera italiana," Economics Department Working Papers 2008-EP02, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    4. Nusrat Hafiz & Ahmad Shaharudin Abdul Latiff & Md Asadul Islam & Abu Naser Mohammad Saif & Sazali Abd Wahab, 2022. "Towards the Underlying Theories of Small Firm Growth: A Literature Review," FIIB Business Review, , vol. 11(1), pages 36-51, March.
    5. Anjali Kumar & Manuela Francisco, 2005. "Enterprise Size, Financing Patterns, and Credit Constraints in Brazil : Analysis of Data from the Investment Climate Assessment Survey," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7330.
    6. A. Arrighetti & A. Ninni, 2009. "Firm size and growth opportunities: a survey," Economics Department Working Papers 2009-EP05, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Foss Kirsten & Foss Nicolai & Klein Peter G. & Klein Sandra K., 2002. "Heterogeneous Capital, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Organization," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-20, March.
    2. John A. Mathews, 2001. "Competitive Interfirm Dynamics within an Industrial Market System," DRUID Working Papers 01-01, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    3. Bengt-Åke Lundvall & Frank Skov Kristensen, 1997. "Organisational Change, Innovation and Human Resource Development as a Response to Increased Competition," DRUID Working Papers 97-16, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    4. Alice Lam, 2003. "Organizational Learning in Multinationals: R&D Networks of Japanese and US MNEs in the UK," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 673-703, May.
    5. Björn Johnson & Olman Segura-Bonilla, 2001. "Innovation Systems and Developing Countries Experiences from the SUDESCA Project," DRUID Working Papers 01-12, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    6. Keld Laursen & Valentina Meliciani, 2000. "The importance of technology-based intersectoral linkages for market share dynamics," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 136(4), pages 702-723, December.
    7. Nicolai J. Foss, 2001. "Selective Intervention and Internal HybridsInterpreting and Learning from the Rise and Decline of the Oticon Spaghetti Organization," DRUID Working Papers 01-16, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    8. Nicolai J. Foss, 2001. "Economic Organization in the Knowledge Economy Some Austrian Insights," DRUID Working Papers 01-07, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    9. Keld Laursen & Ammon Salter, 2005. "The fruits of intellectual production: economic and scientific specialisation among OECD countries," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 29(2), pages 289-308, March.
    10. Dieter Ernst, 1999. "Responses to the Crisis Constraints to a Rapid Trade Adjustment in East Asia´s Electronics Industry," DRUID Working Papers 99-2, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    11. Dieter Ernst, 1998. "Catching-Up, Crisis and Industrial Upgrading. Evolutionary Aspects of Technological Learning in Korea's Electronics Industry," DRUID Working Papers 98-16, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    12. Nicolai J. Foss, 2001. "The Problem With Bounded Rationality On Behavioral Assumptions in the Theory of the Firm," DRUID Working Papers 01-15, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    13. Bengt-Åke Lundvall, 2002. "The University in the Learning Economy," DRUID Working Papers 02-06, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    14. Adolfo Nemirovsky & Gabriel Yoguel, 2001. "Dynamics of High-Technology Firms in the Silicon Valley," DRUID Working Papers 01-03, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    15. Gabriel Yoguel & Marta Novick & Anabel Marin, 2000. "Production Networks Linkages, Innovation Processes and Social Management Technologies. A Methodological Approach Applied to the Volkswagen case in Argentina," DRUID Working Papers 00-11, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    16. Nicolaj J. Foss & Volker Mahnke, 2003. "Knowledge Management What Can Organizational Economics Contribute?," DRUID Working Papers 03-02, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    17. Ionara Costa, 2001. "Ownership and Technological Capabilities in Brazil," DRUID Working Papers 01-06, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    18. Nicolai J. Foss, 2001. "Bounded Rationality in the Economics of Organization Present Use and (Some) Future Possibilities," DRUID Working Papers 01-13, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    19. Keld Laursen, 1998. "Do Export and Technological Specialisation Patterns Co-evolve in Terms of Convergence or Divergence? Evidence From 19 OECD Countries, 1971-1991," DRUID Working Papers 98-18, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    20. Kirsten Foss & Nicolai J. Foss, 1999. "Organizing Economic Experiments The Role of Firms," DRUID Working Papers 99-5, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    firm growth; human capital; knowledge structure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L21 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Business Objectives of the Firm
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:aal:abbswp:99-11. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Keld Laursen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.druid.dk/ .

    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.