Research for Competitiveness, Organizational Performance, and human Excellence

Research to date shows that innovative firms distinguish themselves by their ability to exploit (1) flexible organizational forms; (2) dynamic rather than routine management practices, with a large absorption capacity and readiness to learn; (3) a willingness to invest in employees and fully deploy internal as well as external labour flexibility. Furthermore, two enabling factors seem to be of significant relevance to explain the innovativeness of firms: (4) their openness to interactions with external partners and various knowledge institutions; and (5) their ability to mobilize institutional stakeholders, from social partners and educational institutions to financial investors. The overall performance of the firm is heavily influenced by the combined effects from these five aspects of social innovation (6). Investments in social innovation will result in increased productivity of firms and their competitive position (7).

The conceptual framework of INSCOPE's research programme (Source: Erasmus Concurrentie en Innovatie Monitor 2005)

INSCOPE’s research is clustered in seven corresponding themes: Theme 1 investigates how various flexible organizational forms and restructuring enable social innovation. Theme 2 focuses on how innovations in management roles and leadership styles, managing diversity in teams and entrepreneurship give rise to dynamic manage­rial capabilities that trigger social innovation. Theme 3 concentrates on the development and maintenance of employee skills and competences, effective internal communication, and HRM/labour relations which enable firms to work “smarter” and increase human excellence and the firm’s performance. Theme 4 studies how learning alliances, sophisticated market sensing, interactive client-based innovations, and open innovation networks enable the integration of internal and external knowledge and new interorganizational relationships. Theme 5 concentrates on the role of educational, regulatory, and financial institutions and institutional stakeholders as enablers of innovation and “win-win” solutions. Effectively organizing for social innovation needs the development of proven concepts, systematic study in best practices, research based methods and tools for implementing the combined knowledge on technical and social innovation (Theme 6).

These six themes are integrated in Theme 7, through systematic measurement and evaluation of their effects on:

1. the firm’s performance and productivity (with the Erasmus Social Innovation Monitor)
2. the quality of labour (with the HR benchmark).

In addition, international innovation rankings (on the basis of World Economic Forum data) and international productivity benchmarks are produced. The conceptual framework of INSCOPE’s research programme illustrates the relationship between the main themes.

The results will enable original, interdisciplinary contributions to the global state-of-art understanding of the relationship between firms and their employees and customers, and between firms, business partners and other institutional stakeholders. By leveraging existing initiatives, INSCOPE substantially increases the mass and focus of the pool of expertise in this area, bringing together the top Dutch researchers from different scientific disciplines from four universities (EUR, UM, UvA, RUG). These researchers have world-class academic standing and strong connections to industry. INSCOPE will maximize the international visibility of their work and increase the Dutch reputation for academic excellence and thought leadership in this domain.