The impact of technology orientation, strategic firm resources and resource orchestration on small high-tech firms innovation: evidence from the UK

Innovation is the driving force of a high-tech small business and plays a vital role in developing the firm's competitiveness and achieving sustainable growth. High-tech firms are a significant force for innovation as they are primarily private firms and the main foundation of the UK private sector. This thesis endeavours to unravel the innovation dilemma of high-tech firms by examining how strategic firm resources and the use of these strategic firm resources are exploited in their innovation process to achieve innovation performance. Firstly, this study draws upon the resource-based view and resource orchestration theory to examine how technology orientation influences innovation performance. Secondly, this study examines the impact of strategic firm resources (availability of technological resources, availability of financial resources, networking capability, and degree of openness) on the relationship between technology orientation and innovation performance. Thirdly, this study examines the role of resource orchestration (structuring, bundling, and leveraging) between the availability of strategic firm resources and innovation performance. Based on a quantitative study, this thesis examines the mechanism of the innovation process using quantitative survey data from 141 high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The key findings of this thesis revealed that technology orientation positively impacts innovation performance. Furthermore, the results show that the availability of technological resources, networking capability, and the degree of openness positively affect the nexus of technology orientation and innovation performance. In contrast, the availability of financial resources does not positively impact the relationship between technology orientation and innovation performance. Furthermore, other key findings show that resource orchestration (structuring, bundling and leveraging) impacts the relationship between the availability of strategic firm resources and innovation performance. Specifically, structuring, bundling and leveraging positively and partially mediate the relationship between strategic firm resources (availability of technological resources, networking capability, and degree of openness) and innovation performance. However, regarding the availability of financial resources, structuring has a negative impact on the relationship between the availability of financial resources and innovation performance, whilst bundling and leveraging have a full mediating effect on the relationship between the availability of financial resources and innovation performance. This research extends the understanding of the innovation process in high-tech small firms by exploring the role and orchestration of resources. It tackles the problem of how high-tech firms can achieve innovation performance with scarce resources. Moreover, it enhances the literature on UK high-tech firm's innovation, which provides new knowledge about high-tech business in a developed country, contributing to a more holistic picture of high-tech business innovation worldwide. Finally, the study makes a methodological contribution to the study of the innovation performance of high-tech firms by providing a comprehensive understanding of the innovation performance in UK high-tech small firms as it examines two levels of the mediating effect of availability of strategic firm resources and orchestration of strategic firm resources and integrating both resource-based view and resource orchestration theory.

Citation

Aguda, A. (2024) The impact of technology orientation, strategic firm resources and resource orchestration on small high-tech firms innovation: evidence from the UK. University of Wolverhampton. http://hdl.handle.net/2436/625817

Publisher

University of Wolverhampton

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/2436/625817

Type

Thesis or dissertation

Language

en

Description

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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Collections

Theses and Dissertations