Artikel

Relational capital and strategic orientations as antecedents of innovation: Evidence from Mexican SMEs

Questions "Where does innovation initiate in a company?" and "How can a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) leverage its different resources to enhance its innovation capabilities to outperform its competitors?" remain unanswered to date. Accordingly, this study examined the relationship between the firm's relational capital and fundamental strategic orientations that a firm can adopt and how these different orientations affect innovation and organizational performance. The target sample included 360 Mexican SMEs who completed a pen-and-pencil questionnaire conducted at the four main cities of this country. Structural equation modeling was performed, and results revealed a strong positive effect of relational capital over all four strategic orientations considered in this study. However, mixed findings of strategic orientations and innovation were obtained. Although market and entrepreneurial orientation positively influenced innovation, a negative relationship was found between learning orientation and innovation and a nonsignificant relationship between technology orientation and innovation. As expected, innovation positively influenced the performance of SMEs. This study offers essential academic contributions and interesting managerial insights to improve performance using relational capital through innovation and strategic orientations. Therefore, we propose relational capital as an underexploited resource and a source of innovation for SMEs.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Journal: Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship ; ISSN: 2192-5372 ; Volume: 11 ; Year: 2022 ; Issue: 1 ; Pages: 1-19

Classification
Management
Subject
Innovation
Mexico
Relational capital
SMEs
Strategic orientations

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Ramírez-Solis, Edgar R.
Llonch-Andreu, Joan
Malpica-Romero, Alberto D.
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Springer
(where)
Heidelberg
(when)
2022

DOI
doi:10.1186/s13731-022-00235-2
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Artikel

Associated

  • Ramírez-Solis, Edgar R.
  • Llonch-Andreu, Joan
  • Malpica-Romero, Alberto D.
  • Springer

Time of origin

  • 2022

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