عملکرد پروژه های نوآوری و تحلیل اثر ویژگی های سازمانی

ABSTRACT Innovation projects performance: Analyzing the impact of organizational characteristics

A discussion exists among academics and practitioners about the importance of studying the factors of success and failure of projects exist (Balachandra & Friar, 1997; Dvir et al., 1998; Ika et al., 2012; Pinto & Mantel, 1990; Scott-Young & Samson, 2008). Firms design, develop and implement different projects, both internal and external, and their success directly affects significant economic benefits, economic and intellectual growth for its employees, and important loses that can lead to failure.

In the literature, two blocks of investigation aim at highlighting the factors of success and failure of projects within an organization. On one side, some investigations exist about management methodologies using own elaboration surveys as research methods for specific sectors or geographical regions (Bloom & Van Reenen, 2010; Motohashi, 2005). On the other side, some investigations focus on success and failure of projects, building on specific case studies and success criteria about management (Cooke-Davies, 2002; Dilts & Pence, 2006). In addition, several studies analyze in detail the factors that improve organizational innovation (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010; Damanpour & Aravind, 2012; Ganter & Hecker, 2014; García-Vega & López, 2010), but do not link the effect of these factors on the success of innovation projects. According to several authors (Belso Martínez et al. 2013; Cantner et al., 2011), a greater number of successful innovation projects leads to higher incomes for shareholders and higher learning for their employees. Linking innovation with project-based organizations, this study demonstrates the effect of certain organizational characteristics in the success of innovation projects a firm develops. This study introduces fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to the research on innovation projects and applies this approach to a large representative sample of 10,163 Spanish firms.

FsQCA is suitable for exploring complex relationships among several factors influencing an expected outcome (Cheng et al., 2013; Fiss, 2011; Ragin, 2006). By facilitating that analysis, this approach presents a practical way to organize several interdependent cause-effect relationships into a framework explaining variance in performance of innovation projects. Implications to a bigger population are therefore feasible using fsQCA (Woodside, 2013).

The results suggest that no single organizational characteristic is key for ensuring the success of innovation projects, and no particular causal path leads to that outcome. Because of significant interdependencies, the main contributing organizational characteristics to the success of innovation projects within the company relate to organizational innovation, national and international cooperation, firm size, and holding firm membership.

Following this introduction, Section 2 contains the theoretical framework. Section 3 describes the method. Section 4 presents research findings. Section 5 offers conclusions and further research.