The Impact of stakeholder orientation on innovation: An empirical investigation on firm patenting activity
Articolo
Data di Pubblicazione:
2023
Citazione:
The Impact of stakeholder orientation on innovation: An empirical investigation on firm patenting activity / S. Romito, C. Vurro, M. Benassi. - In: SINERGIE. - ISSN 0393-5108. - 41:2(2023 Aug 31), pp. 177-199. [10.7433/s121.2023.09]
Abstract:
Framing of the research. The paper provides novel insights on how firms can boost
innovation output by developing a corporatewide orientation towards stakeholders. It
investigates the patenting activities of a sample of U.S. firms using a panel dataset.
Purpose of the paper. The aim of the paper is to analyze the effect of firm
stakeholder orientation, defined as the adoption of policies and management processes
to identify, understand, and integrate the interest of stakeholders in firms’ decision
making, on innovation output.
Methodology. We validate our hypotheses using a panel dataset of 5.608 unique
firm-year observation on firms’ patenting activity over the period 2002-2012.
Results. We find support for our baseline hypothesis on the positive impact of
increasing degrees of stakeholder orientation on the quantity of firms’ innovation
output. Moreover, the degree of stakeholder orientation has a positive impact on
innovation radicalness and originality, will decreasing the level of innovation
generality.
Research limitations. Our work contributes to an emerging debate on the
innovation potential of stakeholder orientation. It is based on a direct measure of
stakeholder orientation and, based on its methodology, it is not possible to exclude
biases related to unobservable managerial preferences. Moreover, we use patents as a
proxy for innovation output being aware of its limitation.
Managerial implications. Our results suggest the importance of nurturing
stakeholder relations to foster knowledge exchange and reciprocal learning, which are
crucial for firms’ innovativeness. Moreover, our study highlights the importance of
stakeholder orientation in the pursuit of radical and original technological trajectories.
Originality of the paper. Studies on the innovation impact of stakeholder
orientation are still limited and mostly focused on exogenous determinants in
limited timeframe. Our study introduces the degree of stakeholder orientation as a
key construct to predict innovation that accounts for heterogeneity across firms and
stakeholder categories.
Tipologia IRIS:
01 - Articolo su periodico
Keywords:
Stakeholder Orientation; Innovation; Patent
Elenco autori:
S. Romito, C. Vurro, M. Benassi
Link alla scheda completa: