Effie Kesidou

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Leeds

In economically advanced countries, local knowledge spillovers (LKS) between agglomerated firms are seen as major drivers of regional innovation and growth. In contrast, innovation research focusing on developing countries has emphasized international linkages, and has largely neglected LKS. This paper assesses the importance of LKS for innovation...

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 a...

Using the variation in pollution reduction targets across provinces and time variations (before and after the eleventh Five-Year Plan), we examine the impact of stricter environmental regulation upon the production of green patents by firms in China. We find that Chinese manufacturing firms, located in provinces with stricter pollution targets, pro...

Purpose Prior research on open innovation has not investigated changes in knowledge acquisition strategies of firms over time overlooking how learning from past knowledge acquisition can change subsequent search strategies. Also, prior research has focused principally on product innovation overlooking process innovation. The purpose of the paper is...

The environmental economics literature emphasises the key role that environmental regulations play in stimulating eco-innovations. Innovation literature, on the other hand, underlines other important determinants of eco-innovations, mainly the supply-side factors such as firms’ organisational capabilities and demand-side mechanisms, such as custome...

In this paper, we explore whether IT‐enabled organisational transformation (ITOT) moderates the relationship between eco‐innovation and the growth performance of microfirms. Our framework conceptualises ITOT in microfirms as a multistage process that includes: (i) setting a digitalisation strategy , (ii) adopting advanced information systems techno...

Whereas previously scholars advocated a positive relationship between a growing size of the financial sector and economic growth, most recent evidence has shown that this might not be the case at all times. The financialisation literature has pointed to some of the mechanisms through which the increasing size and changing structure of the financial...

As firms face the dual challenges of digitalization and net zero innovation to combat climate change, understanding how these twin transitions relate is crucial. This study examines potential synergies or trade-offs between digital technologies and net zero innovations in UK SMEs. By integrating the Resource-Based View (RBV) and the Attention-Based...

We examine the role institutional pressures, at the subnational level, play in the generation of eco-innovations and explicitly consider how they interact with firms’ heterogeneous capabilities and ownership characteristics. Theoretically, we combine elements from institutional theory with the resource-based view of the firm to develop our hypothes...

This paper examines the importance of sustainability within firms’ strategic goals and its links with innovation in the context of micro‐businesses. Micro‐businesses provide an appropriate context for investigating this relationship because, while they tend to prioritize social and environmental goals, they are also more likely to confront resource...

The CE paradigm has gained significant traction in both academic and industrial circles over the past decade. While there is an intuitive association between transitioning to a CE and achieving a more sustainable society, there has been limited scrutiny regarding its economic viability. To address this, macroeconomic tools are needed to assess the...

Prior research points out the benefits of external collaboration for innovation, yet little is known of: (a) the changes in the scope of external collaboration over time (i.e., firms increasing, seeking stability, or decreasing the geographic scope of their collaboration), and (b) how such changes in the geographic scope of collaboration affect pro...

Adopting an International Sustainability Standard (ISS) helps firms improve their sustainability performance. It also acts as a credible market "signal" that legitimizes firms' latent sustainability practices while improving their market value. But how do these signals function when firms adopt multiple ISSs? We show that the relationships between...

In this paper, we employ negative binomial and quasi-natural experimental methods (i.e., Difference-in-Differences and Propensity Score Matching), whereby we examine the joint impact of environmental and digital policies (for designing smart cities) upon the generation of eco-innovations in China. Using longitudinal data for the period 2006–2018, w...

Innovative firms must decide whether they should specialize in either exploratory or exploitative R&D or adopt an ambidextrous R&D-strategy (pursue both). This study extends research on exploration/exploitation by explaining how the effects of ambidextrous and specialized R&D-strategies on a focal firm’s performance are influenced by the R&D-strate...

Although interest in meaningfulness is mounting in the growing stream of research dedicated to how professionals experience it, research has only just begun to investigate the complex relationships between the search for meaningfulness and the constitution of professional identity for emerging professional groups. This paper investigates how meanin...

Research on ambidexterity has established that many firms engage in temporal cycling between exploratory and exploitative activities, but it has not examined how quickly firms engage in temporal cycling and how this decision affects their performance. We enhance understanding of this phenomenon by examining how the speed at which innovative firms c...

Despite consensus in the literature that regulation, technology push, and market pull drive eco‐innovation (EI), evidence remains limited on the diverse firm capabilities needed to boost EI. Building on the natural‐resource‐based view of the firm and the EI literature, this paper posits that firms need to renew and realign their capabilities, and u...

This article contributes to the literature on the financial constraints of innovation in two ways. First, we examine whether financialisation has transformed the relation between finance and innovation by assessing the association between companies' financial relations, both on the liability side and the asset side of their balance sheets, and inta...

This paper analyses the role of external pressures, internal motivations and their interplay, with the intention of identifying whether they drive substantive or instead symbolic implementation of ISO 14001. The context is one of economic crisis. We focus on Greece, where the economic crisis has weakened the country’s institutional environment, and...

Despite the important role certifiable management system standards (CMSS) play in our globalised economies, there still exists a gap in the literature regarding firms’ motives to implement these standards. This is mainly due to the fact that existing literature perceives certification as synonymous with implementation and does not take into account...

This article focuses on environmental management systems (EMS) and aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between environmental state regulation and self-regulation. Unlike previous studies that treat state regulation as uni-dimensional and focus on externally certified forms of environmental self-regulation, this article takes a mor...

This article examines how Cuban-based firms and entrepreneurs circumvented ever- increasing risks in the illegal slave trade. The article sheds light to this question by analyzing new qualitative information of 65 Cuban-based firms against the Slavevoyages database. Our findings indicate that Cuban-based firms were entrepreneurial as they exploited...

At the time of the Congress of Vienna in 1814 the involvement of Cuban-based Spanish merchants in the slave trade seemed to be coming to an end. Although British diplomatic pressures in Vienna fail to achieve any long-lasting agreement on the part of the European slave trading nations, soon after, many of them were forced to sign bilateral treaties...

Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are organisational environmental innovations with a remarkable potential for environmental sustainability transformations in firms. Research on EMS treats regulatory compliance pressures as key, yet, one- dimensional determinants of EMS adoption and certification. However, insights from the policy-oriented inn...

The importance of geographic proximity for innovation has been widely stressed in the cluster literature. Yet, new insights from the inter-organisational network and cluster literatures underline the role of non-local linkages in enabling firms in networks to enhance learning and to innovate. This paper contributes to this literature by examining t...

The aim of this paper is to identify the key drivers of organizational eco-innovations by looking at the motivations of UK companies for adopting Environmental Management Systems (EMS). Besides competitive, ethical, and institutional motives, this study considers the importance of the capabilities and internal resources that firms hold in stimulati...

NelsonRoy C., Harnessing Globalization: The Promotion of Nontraditional Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2009), pp. xviii+262, $65.00, hb. - Volume 43 Issue 1 - EFFIE KESIDOU

In this paper, we adopt a recent OECD framework and examine the role of external policy tools and internal firm specific factors for stimulating three different types of eco-innovations that range on a spectrum of lower to higher technological and environmental impacts: End-of-Pipeline Pollution Control Technologies, Integrated Cleaner Production T...

The paper contributes to the understanding of the nature of local knowledge spillovers and their importance for innovation in clusters in developing countries. Using detailed primary data about a cluster of software firms in Montevideo, Uruguay, the paper finds plenty of evidence of the existence of pure unintentional knowledge spillovers. In addit...

Summary In economically advanced countries, local knowledge spillovers (LKS) between agglomerated firms are seen as major drivers of regional innovation and growth. In contrast, innovation research focusing on developing countries has emphasized international linkages, and has largely neglected LKS. This paper assesses the importance of LKS for inn...

This paper examines the importance of local knowledge spillovers for the innovative and export performance of firms in a developing country context. Theoretical and empirical studies in advanced economies underline the significance of local knowledge spillovers for innovation. However, not much is known about whether local knowledge spillovers work...

This paper examines the importance of local knowledge spillovers for the innovative and economic performance of firms in a developing country context. Theoretical and empirical studies in advanced economies underline the significance of local knowledge spillovers for innovation. However, not much is known about whether local knowledge spillovers wo...

The paper contributes to the understanding of local knowledge spillovers and their importance for innovation in clusters in developing countries. Extensive primary data collected from software firms in Montevideo, Uruguay, are used to bring out the varied nature of knowledge flows that occur in the local cluster. The relative importance of differen...

Presented at the GLOBELICS 2006 conference in India during 4-7 October 2006. Session II-3 Innovations in New Technologies: IT and BT

Do local knowledge spillovers foster innovation in clusters in developing countries? If so, what is the extent of local knowledge spillovers? How do they take place under different conditions? How important are in comparison to other geographic advantages? Local knowledge spillovers are positive technological externalities, which derive from the in...

Currently, a number of economic geographers and economists of innovation incorporate knowledge spillovers in their analysis of clusters (Jaffe, Trajtenberg and Hesderson, 1993; Audretsch and Feldman, 1996; Verspagen and Schoenmakers 2000, Caniels 1999). They argue that local technological externalities are the main reason for the clustering of inno...