IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-00004978.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

External knowledge sourcing in different national settings: a comparison of electronics establishments in Britain and France

Author

Listed:
  • Geoff Mason

    (National Institute of Economic and Social Research)

  • Jean-Paul Beltramo

    (IREDU - Institut de recherche sur l'éducation : Sociologie et Economie de l'Education - UB - Université de Bourgogne)

  • Jean-Jacques Paul

    (IREDU - Institut de recherche sur l'éducation : Sociologie et Economie de l'Education - UB - Université de Bourgogne)

Abstract

In a detailed comparison of matched samples of electronics establishments in Britain and France, this paper finds that the two samples of establishments were operating in distinctively different national labour markets for engineers and scientists, reflecting structural differences in national higher education systems and a far higher level of individual mobility between enterprises in Britain than is found in France. These differences were found to have very little effect on quantitative measures of establishments' external research interactions which tended to reflect other national-institutional differences such as continued government support for public laboratories in France of a kind which have now been largely privatised in Britain. However, qualitative evidence pointed to a faster rate of development of new external knowledge sourcing and relationship building in Britain which was partly stimulated by the greater mobility of individual engineers and scientists between enterprises and other organisations bringing new personal networks of external contacts with them. These tendencies contrasted with a marked stability in external research linkages in France. The paper suggests that the greater openness of British R&D networks to new ideas and knowledge may be particularly advantageous in fast-changing high-tech industries such as electronics.

Suggested Citation

  • Geoff Mason & Jean-Paul Beltramo & Jean-Jacques Paul, 2004. "External knowledge sourcing in different national settings: a comparison of electronics establishments in Britain and France," Post-Print halshs-00004978, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00004978
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Davenport, Sally, 2005. "Exploring the role of proximity in SME knowledge-acquisition," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 683-701, June.
    2. Mason, Geoff & O'Leary, Brigid & Vecchi, Michela, 2012. "Certified and uncertified skills and productivity growth performance: Cross-country evidence at industry level," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 351-360.
    3. Caroli, Eve, 2007. "Internal Versus External Labour Flexibility: The Role of Knowledge Codification," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 201, pages 107-118, July.
    4. Philippe Mustar & Mike Wright, 2010. "Convergence or path dependency in policies to foster the creation of university spin-off firms? A comparison of France and the United Kingdom," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 42-65, February.
    5. Thomas Couppié & Arnaud Dupray & Dominique Épiphane & Virginie Mora, 2018. "20 ans d'insertion professionnelle des jeunes : entre permanences et évolutions," Post-Print hal-03517119, HAL.
    6. Xiangdong Zhan & Fuji Xie, 2023. "Knowledge Activities of External Knowledge Network and Technological Capability: Evidence from China," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 14(2), pages 1343-1370, June.
    7. Murphree, Michael & Petersen, Bui & Warrian, Peter & Gosine, Ray, 2022. "Scope and scale of technology challenge and MNE subsidiary knowledge sourcing in host countries," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    8. Geoff Mason, 2014. "Skills and training for a more innovation-intensive economy," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 431, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    9. repec:dau:papers:123456789/7247 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Huber, Franz, 2013. "Knowledge-sourcing of R&D workers in different job positions: Contextualising external personal knowledge networks," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 167-179.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00004978. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.