The instrumentation of science parks: an integrative framework of enabling factors
| Date | 05 May 2020 |
| Pages | 24-56 |
| Published date | 05 May 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-11-2019-0264 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & Finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Angel Meseguer-Martinez,Simona Popa,Pedro Soto-Acosta |
The instrumentation of science
parks: an integrative framework of
enabling factors
Angel Meseguer-Martinez
Department of Business Administration, University of Castilla-La Mancha,
Toledo, Spain
Simona Popa
Department of Financial Economics and Accounting, University of Murcia,
Murcia, Spain, and
Pedro Soto-Acosta
Department of Management and Finance, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –Research on Science parks (SPs) has attracted a growing interest in the last decades. This
widespread innovation policy initiative pursues technology-based industrial and entrepreneurial growth
through business development and technology transfer across new and mature firms. Despite the common
agreement on SPs’potential benefits, literature have showed mixed results regarding the performance of SPs.
To explain this findings, currentresearch pointed out at the lack of a common guiding framework.To cover this
knowledge gap, this manuscript proposes an integrative definition and research model together with a
multidimensional measurement instrument suitable to encompass the diverse reality of this global
phenomenon.
Design/methodology/approach –Based on a systematic literature review of 281 indexed journal articles
published between 1990 and 2018, the paper provides an integrative framework of enabling factors of SPs’
performance.
Findings –The results illustrate an integrative conceptual framework of SPs that allows further comparison
and generalization of research. At the same time, this manuscript provides valuable insights for managers and
entrepreneurs as it conveys a standardized view of SPs’internal context useful for benchmarking.
Originality/value –Grounded in the resource-based view (RBV), the paper conducts a thorough literature
review to develop an integrative research model featuring three value streams: physical infrastructures, formal
links and support services. In addition, a multidimensional measurement tool to operationalize these three
dimensions is proposed.
Keywords Science parks, Resource-based view, Integrative framework, Physical infrastructures, Formal
links, Support services
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Science parks (SPs) are a global phenomenon that brings together innovative firms, research
and resources in order to artificially generate agglomerations of enterprises conducive to
technological innovation (Chen et al., 2013;Meseguer-Martinez et al., 2019). Being the most of
them planned and developed to imitate the success of naturally emerging clusters (Koçak and
Can, 2013), they are intended to support the economic and social development of regions
through technology transfer, business innovation and technology-based entrepreneurship.
Over the years, SPs have become key actors within regional innovation systems and
important policy tools for economic landscapes development (Gkypali et al., 2016). SPs enable
to create clustering effects (Yang et al., 2009) and support not only innovation in new firms,
which lack the necessary knowledge and resources, but also the business expansion of
consolidated firms (Huang et al., 2012).
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1469-1930.htm
Received 14 November 2019
Revised 20 February 2020
Accepted 9 March 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 22 No. 1, 2021
pp. 24-56
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-11-2019-0264
After the first experiences in the United States in the decade of the 1950s, SPs are today
present in the five continents (Hobbs et al., 2017). The International Association of Science
Parks (IASP) reports having 342 registered members spread across 77 countries, with more
than 115,000 firms (IASP, 2019). Other associations, such as the American Association of
University Research Parks (AURP) or the Asian Science Park Association (ASPA) also have a
growing number of members which, in many cases, are not registered in the IASP. According
to recent data, the AURP has around 90 members (AURP, 2019), while the ASPA counts with
282 (ASPA, 2019).
From the academic research point of view, SPs are also gaining increasing attention
(Mora-Valentin et al., 2018;Diez-Vial and Montoro-Sanchez, 2017). A simple search of the term
“science park”in economics and business research databases, yields hundreds of relevant
results in management, business agglomeration, entrepreneurship, economic policy or urban
planning. This denotes the consolidation of the SP concept as an interdisciplinary
research field.
Previous research has provided extended empirical support for positive effects of SPs on
firm-level aspects, such as sales and job growth (L€
ofsten and Lindel€
of, 2002), research
productivity (Siegel et al., 2003a), survival rate (Ferguson and Olofsson, 2004), engagement in
joint investigation with research institutes (Fukugawa, 2006), R&D efficiency (Yang et al.,
2009), innovation performance (Squicciarini, 2009), absorptive capacity (Patton, 2014) and
product innovation (D
ıez-Vial and Fern
andez-Olmos, 2015). This stream of research regards
SPs at an aggregate level as one of the most important innovation policy initiatives (V
asquez-
Urriago et al., 2016) as well as essential elements within national innovation systems (Zou and
Zhao, 2014).
Furthermore, previous literature has questioned the effects of SPs on firm profitability
(L€
ofsten and Lindel€
of, 2002), the generation of research synergies (Bakouros et al., 2002),
collaboration between tenants (Phillips and Yeung, 2003), R&D output (Lindel€
of and L€
ofsten,
2004), and market impact (Lamperti et al., 2017). In this vein, critics pointed out that SPs
benefits for firms beyond prestige and image are negligible (Ferguson and Olofsson, 2004;
Siegel et al., 2003b). In light of these mixed results, the effects of SPs for firms remain doubtful
(Liberati et al., 2016) and so does the hypothesis that they have been successful in
accomplishing their policy mission (Lamperti et al., 2017;Squicciarini, 2008).
A possible explanation for the contradictory findings is that SPs are characterized by a
large variety of configurations in terms of resources and capabilities. Due to the diversity of
legal, economic and social environments, the concept of SP encompasses diverse realities
regarding strategy development and territorial anchoring of economic and innovation
activity (Doloreux, 1999;Hommen et al., 2006). This heterogeneity can lead to the lack of
unanimity observed in the results reported by research (Albahari et al., 2013;Guadix et al.,
2016). Therefore, it is considered that existing empirical studies have ignored the significant
differences between SPs (Cheng et al., 2014).
The heterogeneity in the concept of SPs is reflected by the fact that several terms such as
research park,technology park,business park,innovation center or policy-driven parks are used
to refer to the same concept (L€
ofsten and Lindel€
of, 2002;Huang et al., 2012). Owing to the
diversity of concepts that fall into the category of SP, no commonly agreed definition of SPs
exists to-date (Dettwiler et al., 2006;Cheng et al., 2014). This diversity of realities has not only
hampered the availability of a definition (Link and Scott, 2006) but has also limited
measurement and comparison. To date, extant studies have approached SPs from particular
perspectives, ignoring the overall dimension of the phenomenon; thus, research results are
not generalizable due to their narrow focus (V
asquez-Urriago et al., 2014). Hence, the attempts
to construct and generalize theories have been futile and, as a result, the field lacks of an
integrative framework to study and measure SPs and their performance in a systematic
manner (Phan et al., 2005;Mian et al., 2016). Therefore, there is a need for an integrative
The
instrumentation
of science parks
25
research models capable of being used to characterize and measure SPs (Siegel et al., 2003b;
Salvador and Rolfo, 2011).
In order to contribute to the conceptual framework of SPs, we aim at providing an
integrative definition and instrumentation of the SP concept suitable to encompass its diverse
reality. On this basis, we pose the following research questions:
RQ1. How could the concept of science park be described from an integrative
perspective?
RQ2. Which dimensions can be identified in SPs and how could they be measured from
an integrative perspective?
2. Theoretical framework: the resource-based view
The resource-based view (RBV) has been extensively used to explain performance differences
between organizations from the same micro-environment. This theoretical approach claims
that resources and capabilities possessed by an organization may be a source of sustainable
competitive advantage when they are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and not substitutable
(Barney, 1991;Falahat et al., 2020; Xin et al., 2014). Resources are broadly defined as tangible
and intangible assets that are owned or controlled by an organization, while capabilities are
the abilities, skills and accumulated knowledge that serves to combine and leverage resources
through business processes and routines (Popa et al., 2018;Somsuk and Laosirihongthong,
2014;Soto-Acosta et al., 2014). Other studies declare that capabilities are in fact a special type
of specific resource, organizationally embedded, intangible in nature and, thus, non-
transferable (Makadok, 2001;Soto-Acosta and Mero~
no-Cerdan, 2008).
Previous literature generally divides resources into two categories: tangible and
intangible resources (Barney, 1991;Soetanto and Jack, 2013). Tangible resources include
physical and financial assets (Grant, 1991), while intangible resources encompass non-
physical assets and skills (Falahat et al., 2020; Hall, 1992).
SPs offer tenants a broad variety of tangible resources, ranging from park and office
space, shared reception, conference and meeting rooms, labs and equipment to leisure
facilities (Chandra and Chao, 2016;Hsu et al., 2003;McAdam and McAdam, 2008;Mian, 1997;
Peters et al., 2004). In some studies, the category of tangible resources proposed by Barney
and Hesterly (2006) is replaced by technological resources, which refer to technological
equipment, laboratories, specialized skills and technological capabilities (Somsuk and
Laosirihongthong, 2014). However, although technology is a corner stone for SPs and similar
organizations, previous research considers that technological resources by themselves are
typically imitable and, thus, should not constitute the basis of competitive advantage. In
order to overcome the paradoxical nature of technological resources, the RBV highlights the
role of complementarity between resources as a source of sustainable returns over time (Bhatt
and Grover, 2005). Through the lens of the RBV, previous studies show that complementarity
of resources exists when the strategic potential of a resource is enhanced by the presence of
another resource (Ravichandran and Lertwongsatien, 2005). In the same vein, previous
studies argue that firms that are able to align technology resources with other corporate
resources and integrate them into organizational processes may show superior performance
(Soto-Acosta and Mero~
no-Cerdan, 2008;Popa et al., 2018). Similarly, previous research shows
that academic spin-offs need complementary resources, such as laboratories and
technological expert advice to make technology evolve from scientific discoveries to new
products and services that can be commercially exploited (Swamidass, 2013).
Previous investigation, drawing on the RBV, also suggests that, in order to expand their
resource base, organizations build collaboration networks with external partners to access
and benefit from their new technologies, skills and expertise (Ahuja, 2000;Huggins and
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