Innovation and business performance for Spanish SMEs: New evidence from a multi-dimensional approach

This article examines the impact of product, process and organisational innovations on two alternative dimensions of business performance: finance and operations. Two indicators capture financial performance: sales increase and production cost reduction. Operational firm performance is captured by t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational small business journal Vol. 36; no. 8; pp. 911 - 931
Main Authors Exposito, Alfonso, Sanchis-Llopis, Juan A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2018
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Business
Cost control
Cost reduction
Dimensional approach
Finance
Financial performance
Innovation policy
Innovations
Organizational performance
Production
Production costs
Quality
Quality management
Sales
Small & medium sized enterprises-SME
innovation
business performance
SME
multi-dimensional analysis
Spain
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Summary:This article examines the impact of product, process and organisational innovations on two alternative dimensions of business performance: finance and operations. Two indicators capture financial performance: sales increase and production cost reduction. Operational firm performance is captured by two alternative indicators: productive capacity augmentation and quality improvement of product/service provided by the firm. Using a wide-ranging sample of Spanish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), our findings highlight the significant impact of innovation upon both these dimensions of business performance, although they differ regarding the type of innovation and the performance indicator considered. Furthermore, our results indicate that the relationship between innovation choices in SMEs and business performance should be analysed from a multi-dimensional approach. These findings reveal significant implications for innovation policies and strategies for SMEs.
ISSN:0266-2426
1741-2870
DOI:10.1177/0266242618782596