The structural capital, the innovation and the performance of the industrial SMES
| Published date | 30 April 2020 |
| Date | 30 April 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-01-2019-0020 |
| Pages | 913-945 |
| Author | Nicolás Salvador Beltramino,Domingo García-Perez-de-Lema,Luis Enrique Valdez-Juárez |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & Finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
The structural capital, the
innovation and the performance of
the industrial SMES
Nicol
as Salvador Beltramino
Departamento y Tecnolog
ıas de la Informaci
on,
Facultad de Ciencias Economicas, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Cordoba,
Argentina
Domingo Garc
ıa-Perez-de-Lema
Universidad Politecnica de Cartagena, Cartagena, Spain, and
Luis Enrique Valdez-Ju
arez
Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora, Guaymas, Mexico
Abstract
Purpose –The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of the structural capital of SMEs in the
capacity of innovation and organizational performance, in the context of an emerging country.
Design/methodology/approach –The sample consisted of 259 industrial SMEs from the province of
C
ordoba Argentina. The data was analyzed by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling
(PLS–SEM).
Findings –The study provided evidence that acquisition of information and knowledge management,
organizational culture and structure, systems and processes have positive and significant effects on the
innovation capacity of SMEs. Only the communication and cohesion component did not show positive and
significant results on it. It also showed a positive and significant relationship between the capacity for
innovation in processes andperformance, contributing to the scarce empirical literature in the context of SMEs.
Research limitations/implications –The research exposes some limitations that uncover a path for the
development of future lines of research. In the first place, the work focuses on the use of a single source of
information, the consultation at the managerial level of the company, withoutconsidering other representative
variables to measure the capacity for innovation. Second, the study covered only companies in the industrial
sector and country. Future studies should focus on other sectors and countries.
Practical implications –The results of the study can have important practical implications for the owners
and managers of SMEs. The results offer a vision of the dimensions of structural capital that most influence the
innovative capacity of the organization. This is especially useful given that in the context of Argentina there is
a low level of knowledge and structural capital is key to being more competitive. The managers of SMEs can
thus increase the innovative potential of the company and favor the acquisition of information and knowledge
and improve its processes and systems to contribute to the development of innovation capabilities to make
SMEs more competitive.
Social implications –The results obtained can be useful for those responsible for making public policy
decisions, since in the knowledge of the economy to maintain a developed state and nation, it is necessary to
include as one of the main issues on the national agenda the improvement of intellectual capital of its people to
promote the competitiveness of companies.
Originality/value –The research contributes to the development of intellectual capital literature focused on
the generation of innovation and performance in the perspective of SMEs in emerging countries.
Keywords Innovation, Performance, Structural capital, Acquisition of information and knowledge
management, Organizational culture, Communication
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In a knowledge-based economy, intellectual capital is one of the most important and critical
resources for an organization to thrive in a competitive environment (Khalique et al., 2011).
Therefore, organizations have to efficiently manage collective learning and accumulated
Structural
capital and
performance of
industrial SMEs
913
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 24 January 2019
Revised 29 May 2019
30 September 2019
15 December 2019
19 February 2020
Accepted 10 March 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 21 No. 6, 2020
pp. 913-945
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-01-2019-0020
knowledge (Bontis, 1998;Bontis et al., 2005). Structural capital is part of the intellectual
capital and is one of the main components that give greater benefits within a company and
that require greater attention by managers (Bontis et al., 2018;Zahra et al., 2018).
Structural capital or also known as organizational capital by literature refers to the
mechanisms and structures of the organization that can help employees to achieve optimal
intellectual performance and thus achieve better performance (Bontis, 1998;Bontis et al.,
2005). This implies that an individual can have the highest intellectual level, but if the
organization does not have an efficient structure, systems and processes that allow its
contribution to be effective, then the company will not achieve its full potential (Bontis, 1998;
Hasan and Cheung, 2018;Santos-Rodrigues and Figueroa-Dorrego, 2011;Torres et al., 2018).
The structural capital consists of all those “non-human assets”that are represented by:
databases, organization charts, process manuals, strategies, routines and anything whose
value to the company are higher than its material value (Bontis et al., 2000). Structural capital
then is “what remains in the company when employees go home at night”(Kalkan et al., 2014).
Structural capital is directly associated with human capital and can also be defined as the
institutionalization of knowledge and experience developed and based on established
structures, systems and processes (Kang and Snell, 2009). Therefore, the purpose of
structural capital is to coordinate and organize a group of employees and factors in an
organization, providing the context that may be appropriate for tools, technologies and
procedures (Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005). In addition, structural capital can be used to
preserve knowledge based on a successful past implementation with the objective of
repeating its use within the organization (Ahmad-Arabiyat and Ibraheem-Hasouneh, 2018).
Following the theoretical lines usually used in the literature on the subject, our work is
based on the theory of resources and capabilities or RBV and the theory of intellectual capital.
The theory of resources and capabilities (Resource-Based View), outlined by Barney (1991),
argues that companies understand themselves in terms of resources and routines
consequently they obtain a competitive advantage through their heterogeneous
combination of resources, instead of working through the market conditions of products
and positioning activities. For its part, the theory of Intellectual Capital, seeks to explain the
increase or creation of value by companies produced by intangible assets (Dumay et al., 2013;
Murray et al., 2016).
The relationship between the components of intellectual capital and the innovation
capacity of companies was analyzed in abundant studies (Santos-Rodrigues et al., 2011;
Subramaniam and Venkatraman, 2001;Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005). However, studies
that relate innovative capacity and structural capital are less common and focus basically on
technological knowledge and organizational routines (D
ıaz-Diaz et al., 2006), and do not focus
in a multidimensional way (Kianto et al., 2017;U
zien_
e and Stankut_
e, 2015).
The components of the intellectual capital are difficult to separate, and there are studies
that have tried to demonstrate the close relationship between its components (Leitner, 2014),
analyzed the relationship between human capital and structural capital, and its effects on
innovation and performance of Austrian innovative companies, obtaining that both had
different impacts. In the case of human capital it had a positive effect on profitability and
long-term growth, contrary to expectations, structural capital had a negative effect on
profitability and growth, which indicates that the apparent strength can become a weakness
in long term. In addition, the study found that human capital and structural capital did not
have a joint effect on the performance of companies.
The analysis about the influence of structural capital on innovation is the main objective
of this paper; it also indicates the effect of innovation in products and processes on the
performance of SMEs. To this end, a study is carried out on a sample of 259 industrial SMEs
in the province of C
ordoba, Argentina, which have between 10 and 200 workers. The
structural capital model takes into account the dimensions: acquisition of information and
JIC
21,6
914
knowledge management; organizational culture; communication and cohesion; and structure,
systems and processes. The research questions that are tried to answer are: Does structural
capital significantly affect innovation in industrial SMEs? What factors of structural capital
have the greatest impact on the innovation of industrial SMEs? Does innovation have a
significant effect on the profitability of the company? The answer to these questions has
important implications, both for the management of the companies and for the academy,
since there is a close relationship between the structural capital and the innovation capacity
of the companies (Bueno Campos, 2013;Chen et al., 2015;Crema and Verbano, 2016;Santos-
Rodrigues et al., 2011). The Argentine case is especially interesting because industrial SMEs
are a fundamental part of its business fabric. In the Province of C
ordoba, Argentina, together
they account for 68% of the total positions filled (OIR, 2017) and together with Santa Fe and
Buenos Aires, they account for 72% of the country’s industrial activity (Uni
on Industrial,
2017). Currently the country is undergoing a major restructuring towards a change in the
production system, in order to reduce the worrying figures of failure of SMEs since 97% does
not reach the fifth year, figures well above those of other countries (Lagunes-Dom
ınguez
et al., 2016).
Our research contributes to literature in different ways. First, from a theoretical approach,
it is studied in an integral way how structural capital influences innovative activity and
performance in SMEs and in the context of an emerging country. A structural capital model is
proposed based on the components acquisition and knowledge management, organizational
culture, communication and cohesion of groups and structure, processes and systems. This
allows obtaining a global vision of the influence of the structural capital of the SME on
innovation. Previous studies conducted in different countries and focused on SMEs have only
partially addressed some of the components of structural capital (Santos-Rodriguez and
Figueroa-Dorrego, 2011;Hogan and Coote, 2014;Ariawan et al., 2016; Agostini and Nosella,
2017; Dedahanov et al., 2017;Allameh, 2018;Alazawi et al., 2018;Kahan, 2019;Alqershi et al.,
2019). Additionally, structural capital is studied in the context of an emerging country. This is
important because these markets are characterized by having a low level of innovation
(Heredia-P
erez et al., 2019), price-sensitive customers (Derbyshire, 2014) and institutions play
a very important role in their strategic processes (Stock et al., 2002). It is necessary to study
innovation processes in different geographical contexts in the field of SMEs, especially in
Latin America where these studies have remained almost unexplored (Hossain and
Kauranen, 2016;Heredia-P
erez et al., 2019). Second, from a practical approach, the results
obtained in the study contribute to the theory of intellectual capital, showing the strong
influence exerted by the hard components of structural capital, such as acquisition and
management of knowledge and structures, systems and processes in SME innovation, both in
products and in processes. These findings are important and help SMEs to understand the
impact that structural capital has on their organization and that can allow them to transform
individual knowledge into collective knowledge, and therefore, favor innovation and
competitiveness of their company.
The rest of the article is organized as follows. First, in the theoretical framework, a review
of the previous literature is presented and the research hypotheses are justified. Second, the
methodology is described, considering the characteristics of the sample and the definition of
the variables. Then, the analysis and results are presented. Finally, the main conclusions and
discussions are exchanged.
2. Theoretical framework and hypothesis
Structural capital, together with human capital and relational capital make the intellectual
capital of the organization (Bontis et al., 2000;Chen et al., 2015;Giocasi, 2015;Gogan et al.,
2016;Ling, 2013;Nuryaman, 2015;Kiong and Lean, 2009). And structural capital can be
Structural
capital and
performance of
industrial SMEs
915
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