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

Abril 2019

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.

Autores da comunidade :

• 

  T

  Tiago Miguel Pinheiro Fonseca

  ist154811

• 

  P

  Pedro Morais Martins de Faria

  ist45282

• 

  F

  Francisco Lima

  ist14367

  Afiliações e fontes

  IST > CEGIST

  Centro de Estudos de Gestão do IST

  IST > DEG

  Departamento de Engenharia e Gestão

  De: orcid

  ID: 73108758

VoR - Versão publicada

Elsevier

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

Research Policy

616

627

48

3

0048-7333

10.1016/j.respol.2018.10.010

economics-and-business - Economia e Gestão

eng - Inglês