The concept of the circular economy (CE) is currently gaining impetus as a way to move towards sustainable, low‐carbon, resource‐efficient, and competitive economies. However, despite the potential ...benefits of CE activities, their implementation remains relatively rare. We use a cross‐sectional survey of European small and medium‐sized firms (SMEs) to identify the main barriers firms face to promote the CE, focusing specifically on the following: those related to a lack of resources (human and financial) and capabilities (expertise) and those related to the regulatory framework (administrative procedures and the costs of meeting the regulations). Our results indicate that it is the complexity of administrative/legal procedures and the costs of meeting regulations/legal standards that constitute the most significant barriers, whereas the lack of human resources is also perceived to be an obstacle by firms engaged in CE activities. Those obstacles may be considered revealed barriers, and it is only when the firms become involved in these activities that they actually perceive them. Furthermore, when we consider the breadth of CE activities, administrative procedures and regulations once again emerge as the most significant obstacles. Finally, we stress the need to distinguish between different CE activities given that the perception of barriers differs substantially across these activities. Firms undertaking a disruptive innovation redesigning products and services to minimize the use of materials are more likely to perceive all barriers as important. However, firms implementing such activities as minimizing waste, replanning energy usage, and using renewable energy only perceive those obstacles related to administrative procedures and regulations.
Using insights from institutional literature, the resource‐based theory of the firm, and internationalization, we explain variations in the diffusion of organizational eco‐innovations. Studies have ...previously reported that the drivers of eco‐innovation are regulatory pressures, technology push, market pull, and firm factors. But relatively little attention has been paid to nontechnological forms of eco‐innovation, such as environmental management systems (EMS). Consequently, how exactly to encourage EMS adoption across sectors is still unclear. We attempt to address this question by combining sectoral panel data (2009–2014) from a number of sources in Spain. The econometric analysis reveals that environmental policy is driving the adoption of ISO 14001 largely due to differences across sectors in energy and pollution intensity. In addition, the adoption of ISO 9001 increases the use of ISO 14001 in industry because of complementarities between the two systems. Third, in highly internationalized sectors, firms adopt a greater amount of ISO 14001.
In this article, we examine the impact of subsidies granted at national and regional levels on a set of research and development (R&D) employment variables, and we specifically seek to identify the ...existence of additional effects of these public subsidies on the R&D human resources of firms. We begin by assessing the effects of public funds on private R&D expenditure and on the number of R&D employees, and then focus on the impact of these funds on the composition of human resources engaged in R&D classified by occupation and level of education. ...
Innovation strategies of energy firms Costa, M. Teresa (Maria Teresa), 1951; Duch Brown, Néstor; Garcia-Quevedo, Jose
Corporate social-responsibility and environmental management,
September/October 2019, Volume:
26, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Investment by energy firms in innovation can have substantial economic and environmental impacts and benefits. Firms engage in innovation for different reasons. The main objective of this paper is to ...analyse the role that the different innovation objectives have on firms' decisions to invest in each of three types of innovation activity: namely, internal R&D, external R&D, and the acquisition of advanced machinery, equipment, or software. We consider four objectives: process innovation, product innovation, reducing environmental impact, and meeting regulatory requirements. With this approach, we examine how energy firms innovate to reduce their environmental impact in comparison with other innovation objectives. In carrying out the empirical analysis, we draw on data for private energy firms included in the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel for the period 2004–2016. In the empirical analysis, we take the potential persistence of innovation activities into account and we use multivariate probit models to control for possible complementarities between the different R&D and innovation investments. Our results show that internal and external R&D are undertaken to address environmental objectives and to meet regulatory requirements whereas the acquisition of advanced machinery has the purpose of developing process innovations.
•This paper examines the determinants of young firms’ R&D activities.•Results suggest that firm characteristics play a distinct role in firms of different ages.•Results have been obtained using a ...recently proposed dynamic type-2 tobit estimator.
This study examines the relationship between R&D drivers and firm's age, taking into account the autoregressive nature of innovation.
Using a large longitudinal dataset comprising Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 1990–2008, we find that previous R&D experience is a fundamental determinant for mature and young firms, albeit to a smaller extent in the case of younger firms, suggesting that their innovation behaviour is less persistent and more erratic.
Moreover, our results suggest that firm and market characteristics play a distinct role in boosting the innovation activity of firms of different ages. In particular, while market concentration and the degree of product diversification are found to be important in fostering R&D activities in the subsample of mature firms only, young firms’ spending on R&D appears to be more sensitive to demand-pull variables.
These results have been obtained using a recently proposed dynamic type-2 tobit estimator, which accounts for individual effects and efficiently handles the initial conditions problem.
Although many innovation projects are abandoned before completion, the empirical evidence has focused on the determinants of innovation, while failed projects have received little attention. This ...paper analyses the role of financial obstacles on the likelihood of abandoning an innovation project by potentially innovative Spanish firms for the period 2005–2013. Our analysis differentiates between the impacts of internal and external barriers on the probability of abandoning a project, and we examine whether these differ depending on the stage of the innovation process. Controlling for potential endogeneity, we use a bivariate probit model to take into account the simultaneity of financial constraints and the decision to abandon an innovation project. Our results show that it is during the conception stage that financial constraints have their greatest effect on the probability of abandoning an innovation project. In addition, the financial sources are not neutral across the innovation project lifecycle. During the design phase, Spanish firms are more sensitive to internal financial sources while, during the execution stage, they are more sensitive to external sources.
•Financial obstacles have different impacts on the failure of innovation projects•We differentiate depending on the stage of development•Bivariate probit model to Spanish CIS data controlling for potential endogeneity•Internal and external financial constraints affect during the concept stage•External financial constraints affect once the innovation project has started
Energy efficiency is considered a very cost-effective way to mitigate air emissions and improve the economic performance of manufacturing industries. Many countries have implemented measures to ...increase energy efficiency in industry. These measures include command-and-control and market-based interventions, and they may be specific to a particular firm or sector. Although these policies may have benefits, the results of the empirical analyses of the effects of these interventions on the adoption of energy-saving technologies are not conclusive. The main objective of this paper is to examine the role of different environmental policy measures on energy efficiency investment. We construct a database from several sources for Spanish industries for the period 2010–2017. This gives us information on a broad range of factors and policy instruments that may drive energy efficiency investments. We consider four different instruments: regulation, taxes, subsidies, and tax credits.
•The role of different environmental policy measures on energy efficiency investment is examined.•Four different instruments (regulation, taxes, subsidies, and tax credits) at industry level are considered.•Subsidies seem to promote energy efficiency investments.•Operation costs and external competition favour energy efficiency innovations.
Summary
Analysis of the effects of public financing on private investment in R & D has been the object of numerous applied studies without it having been possible to arrive at a definite conclusion. ...In this paper the results of a meta‐regression of econometric evidence on the relationship between public funding of R & D and private R & D expenditures is presented. After the creation of a data‐base including all relevant studies and their results and characteristics, a meta‐analysis was carried out to examine whether the characteristics of the applied analysis influence the results and explain the differences in the empirical literature on this subject.
This paper examines the role played by foreign ownership as a determinant of the environmental behaviour of Spanish manufacturing firms. Unlike previous studies, our analysis distinguishes between ...current expenditure on and investment in environmental protection as a way of examining potential differences in the firms’ short- and long-term strategies. The results show how foreign capital boosts expenditure and especially investment. We also highlight the relevance of accounting for heterogeneity at the firm level by focusing on certain structural characteristics that are key in the manufacturing sector, namely, the size of the firm and the sector of activity where it operates. Our results show that size has a positive effect on firms’ decisions about environmental protection. The empirical results also reveal that the beneficial impact of foreign investment is mainly channelled through small firms and it is most evident in industries which are subject to less environmental regulation. Our findings may have pertinent implications regarding the determinants of firms’ environmental behaviour and about the effectiveness of foreign participation as a mechanism for overcoming potential barriers in the adoption of environmental protection measures by small firms.
Plain English Summary
Macro-level studies conclude that foreign ownership promotes environmental protection. But what does firm-level data say about the matter? We contribute to the scarce and controversial evidence about this topic at the firm level by using data from a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms. Our results show that foreign capital drive decisions on expenditure and, especially, in investment in environmental protection. We also reveal that the role played by foreign ownership in the adoption of environmental protection measures is particularly relevant for small businesses, and it is most evident in industries which are subject to less environmental regulation. These findings provide useful insights about the effectiveness of foreign capital participation as a mechanism for overcoming potential barriers in the adoption of environmental protection measures. This is particularly relevant in the case of small firms, which are predominant in the manufacturing sector of most countries.
This paper looks at the effects of demand uncertainty and stagnancy on firms decisions to engage in R&D activities and the amount of financial effort devoted to these. The paper provides a number of ...contributions to the innovation literature: first, it adds to the revived debate on demand-pull perspectives in innovation studies by examining demand-related (lack of) incentives to invest in innovation. Second, it complements the literature on barriers to innovation by focusing on demand-related obstacles rather than the more frequently explored financial barriers. Third, it analyses whether experiencing demand barriers is a sector-specific feature. Firms active in high-or low-tech manufacturing or in knowledge-intensive or low-tech services might be more or less dependent on demand conditions when deciding to perform R&D. We find that uncertain demand and lack of demand are perceived as two quite distinct barriers. While the perception of a lack of demand has a marked negative impact not only on the amount of investment in R&D but also the likelihood of firms to engage in R&D activities, demand uncertainty seems, on the contrary, to represent an incentive to spend more in R&D, although only in low-tech sectors. We interpret this evidence in terms of the specific phase of the innovation cycle in which decisions to invest in R&D are taken. Sectoral affiliation seems to be playing a role only for demand uncertainty, supporting the conjecture that positive expectations on the presence of adequate market demand are a necessary condition to invest in R&D.
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