شناسایی مسیرهای پیکربندی برای نوآوری در SMEs: تجزیه و تحلیل مقایسه ای کیفی مجموعه فازی  Identifying the configurational paths to innovation in SMEs: A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

1. Introduction With increasing global competition in the current business environment, it is vital for companies to look for strategies that provide them with sustainable competitive advantage. The abilities to innovate and to manage inter-organisational relationships are two widely recognised critical factors for business success. Although prior studies have attempted to examine inter-firm networks and their effects on innovation (e.g. Abernathy & Clark, 1985; Ahuja, 2000; Moller, Partanen, Rajala, & Westerlund, 2007; Powell, Koput, & Smith-Doerr, 1996; Rodan & Galunic, 2004), a number of gaps can be identified. First, most research has studied network effects on overall innovation performance. Only a few articles (De Propris, 2002; Gilsing, Nooteboom, Vanhaverbeke, Duysters, & van den Oord, 2008) have considered the effects of inter-firm networks on different types of innovation. Moreover, the majority of studies on the degree of novelty of innovation have focused on large firms (Amara, Landry, Becheikh, & Ouimet, 2008) ignoring the fact that small firms are not simply smaller versions of larger organisations (Moller et al., 2007). Second, Meeus and Faber (2006) argue that researchers have never used real network features as indicators. For example, patent citation does not necessarily reflect network interaction: they can be interaction independent (Meeus & Faber, 2006). Another example is the use of alliances which usually has been measured by announcements made by the firm. However, typically there is no attempt to validate if all these alliances have been actually implemented. Companies, in order to be innovative, need to access different types of resources (e.g. funds and knowledge). SMEs, because of their limited resources, do not have access to all the necessary resources that they require for innovation. Establishing relations with other companies and exchanging resources with partners is one of the ways that can help them to address this issue. Many studies have investigated and confirmed the positive impact of networking with other companies on innovation performance (e.g. Ahuja, 2000; Ahuja & Katila, 2001; Boschma & Wal, 2007; De Propris, 2002).