Article In: orcid

Human capital and innovation: the importance of the optimal organizational task structure

Research Policy

Tiago Fonseca; Pedro de Faria; Francisco Lima — 2019 — Elsevier

Key information

Authors:

Tiago Fonseca (Tiago Miguel Pinheiro Fonseca); Pedro de Faria (Pedro Morais Martins de Faria); Francisco Lima (Francisco Lima)

Published in

April 2019

Abstract

Management literature has identified high-skilled human capital as a crucial dimension of innovation processes at the firm level. In this study, we introduce an alternative view of human capital based on the tasks that firms’ workers perform. We propose a measure of cognitive analytical and interpersonal tasks: the degree of abstractism. We argue that the level of abstractism of a firm has an effect on a firm's propensity to innovate and on its product innovation performance. We hypothesize that while the degree of abstractism has a linear positive relationship with the propensity to innovate, the relationship between abstractism and product innovation performance follows an inverted u-shaped relationship. We find partial support to our hypotheses using data from more than six thousand Portuguese firms. We discuss how these results change our understanding of the relationship between human capital and innovation at the firm level.

Publication details

Authors in the community:

Publication version

VoR - Version of Record

Publisher

Elsevier

Link to the publisher's version

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733310001277

Title of the publication container

Research Policy

First page or article number

616

Last page

627

Volume

48

Issue

3

ISSN

0048-7333

DOI

10.1016/j.respol.2018.10.010

Fields of Science and Technology (FOS)

economics-and-business - Economics and business

Publication language (ISO code)

eng - English

Rights type:

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