We study the process of how firms access basic research and translate this into applied research. Drawing on basic research, firms develop higher quality technologies and develop these technologies more intensely internally. Critical in this process are boundary crossing inventors - inventors...

Successful innovation depends on the development and integration of new knowledge in the innovation process. In order to successfully innovate, the firm will combine different innovation activities. In addition to doing own research and development, firms typically are engaged in the acquisition...

The use of FDI as a channel of international spillovers is by now fairly established in the empirical literature on innovation and growth. It is often argued that subsidiaries of foreign MNEs are a mechanism through which technological know-how flows across borders. For foreign subsidiaries to...

This paper examines the diversity of linkages of firms to science and their effect on innovation performance for a sample of Belgian firms (CIS-3). While at the sectoral level links to science are highly related to the R&D intensity of the sector, we show that there is considerable heterogeneity...

While the impact of M&A on R&D and innovation examined at the aggregate level left inconclusive evidence, we find that at the level of the R&D process both the technological and the market relatedness between the target and the acquirer are helpful dimensions to identify effects. Using...

Economics-based models typically overlook management decisions and firms' capabilities. We develop a model that puts firms at center stage by simulating the aggregate behavior of a population of firms resulting from specific management decisions. The model features a learning process that...

The main objective of the firm in economics-based models is to maximize profit. Dropping this objective in order to make the models more realistic complicates the analysis and is seldom done, thus leaving management action out of the picture. In this paper we try to understand how management...

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, a disastrous world economic crisis is creating a very difficult situation for many people. The causes of the crisis are many and complex. The reigning economism looks for mechanical causes (excessively low interest rates, "herd" behavior in the...

Management control systems (MCS) are designed to achieve the greatest possible goal congruence, where people pursue personal goals that are conducive to the organizational goal. Use and design of MCS are crucial aspects for achieving goal congruence, but they are thought to be contingent to...

This paper attempts to take steps towards the formulation of a more human approach to the theory of the firm than the conventional economics-based models. Unbounded rationality, self-interest and the absence of learning are shown to be crucial assumptions of conventional economic theory. Then,...