Browsing by Author "Fernandes, Cristina Isabel Miranda Abreu Soares"
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- Knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in Portugal: location and innovative capacityPublication . Fernandes, Cristina Isabel Miranda Abreu Soares; Ferreira, João José de Matos; Marques, Carla Susana da EncarnaçãoWithin the service industry, the swift growth of the KIBS (Knowledge Intensive Business Service(s)) sector has played a crucial role in innovation processes. Above all, this role is confirmed by the fact that such entities do not turn in a simple performance in innovation activities as would be the case in simply meeting the needs of prevailing levels of demand or, more specifically, their clients. Instead, they establish bridges of knowledge and points of innovation between companies and science. The literature goes so far as to identify the origins of the third industrial revolution with the importance attributable to KIBS. While the debate on the growth of KIBS unfolds around these new specialist fields and the growth in the tertiary sector in general, there is ever growing recognition that both new manufacturing processes and new services and innovations in more general terms increasingly derive from KIBS. Our interest in KIBS derives from a position broadly defended by a wide range of authors (Muller, 2001; Howells and Tether, 2004; Toivonen, 2004; Koch and Stahlecker, 2006): the irrefutable role played by KIBS in the development of their surrounding regions. In the Thesis below, we have sought to study these companies across four fundamental research facets: (i) location; (ii) cooperation with universities; (iii) factors of innovation and (iv) innovative and competitive capacities. To approach factors of location, we deployed exploratory factorial analysis and Logit regression modelling and found that in this aspect, there was statistical significance for rural and urban KIBS. The results revealed that rural KIBS are essentially influenced by personal motivations and their owners tend to be younger and with fewer years of experience. In the case of urban KIBS, the main factor is the prevailing business conditions in the location with entrepreneurs tending to be older and with more years of experience. Our analysis of cooperation between KIBS and universities involved the application of exploratory factorial analysis and a logit regression model. Our findings show that the probability of KIBS establishing partnerships with universities rises in accordance with the levels of proximity and trust, the types of cost associated with such partnerships and the age of the entrepreneur. Furthermore, we encounter no difference in terms of either location or typology. The results also enable us to conclude that there is a statistically significant effect between the employment of staff with higher education, the age and academic background of the company owner, and the logistical probability of the company locating in rural areas. This means that, while there is little or no direct cooperation between universities and KIBS companies, there is a transfer of knowledge courtesy of the university graduates employed in these professions. The level of graduate employment is high at both rural and urban KIBS. To study the factors of innovation, we made recourse to confirmatory factorial analysis with the objective of verifying whether the strategy, the organisation, the learning, the networks and the process, influence the innovation activities ongoing at KIBS. We found that the network factor is of high importance to both KIBS types (professional and technological). However, professional KIBS also returned the strategy factor as the driver of innovation while technological KIBS attributed greatest priority to learning as a factor for innovation. Furthermore, no statistically significant differences were identified between rural and urban located KIBS. Finally, we applied structural equations for analysis of the innovative and competitive capacities of KIBS and evaluating up to just what point innovation depends on the nature of the service (technological or professional) and location (rural and urban). Firstly, the results of certain analytical processes found that the innovative capacities of the different types of rurally located KIBS displayed no statistical significance while at KIBS in urban locations, professional KIBS companies innovated less than their technological peers and the latter thereby proved able to simultaneously turn in better financial performance and hence may be deemed more competitive.