Innovation, foreign ownership and international linkages. An empirical analysis...

• Author(s): Varum, C. A.
• Date: 2005
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/6895
• Origin: RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro
• Subject(s): International linkages; Knowledge flows; Innovation; Multinationals
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

External knowledge has been identified as a vital input for the innovation process of firms. Increasingly, this knowledge is likely to originate from outside of their national borders. Such knowledge flows in through a variety of channels, namely through foreign multinational enterprises established in a country, and through inter-firm international linkages. While the existing literature has mainly focused on the role of multinational firms to the innovativeness of the host economies, we defend that other types of firms could also be important channels for innovation adoption by firms located in a certain economy. Hence, the objective of the paper is to study how foreign firms (via FDI and international linkages) affect managerial innovation. The study is conducted in Portugal and Spain, not only because they are two economies overlooked by the academia, but also because of their efforts to catch-up in the last decades. We find that it is not so much foreign-ownership, but rather firms’ international linkages that are important for explaining the innovative behaviour of firms.