Corporate governance research suggests that boards of directors play key roles in governing company strategy. Although qualitative research has examined board-management relationships to describe board involvement in strategy, we lack detailed insights into how directors engage with organizational members for governing a complex and long-term issue such as product innovation. Our multiple-case study of four listed pharmaceutical firms reveals a sequential process of board involvement: Directors with deep expertise govern scientific innovation, followed by the full board's involvement in its strategic aspects. The nature of director involvement varies across board levels in terms of the direction (proactive or reactive), timing (regular or spontaneous), and the extent of formality of exchanges between directors and organizational members. Our study contributes to corporate governance research by introducing the concept of board behavioral diversity and by theorizing about the multilevel, structural, and temporal dimensions of board behavior and its relational characteristics.

Innovation is a key factor for companies. It is also essential on an individual scale for employees. To ensure they are utilizing employees to the utmost efficiency, companies must implement practices to ensure the attraction and retention of top employees. Human resource practices can help to define and explain essential techniques to help employees gain satisfaction from their work, creating intrinsic motivation, and allowing them to ultimately perform more efficiently and perhaps even creatively for the company, helping to generate significant profits. The intent of this thesis is to analyze human resource practices on an empirical study of eight companies (provided from a previous study by Erwin Danneels, Ph.D.) and to determine whether or not human resource practices can help predict a firm's ability to enter new markets and implement new technologies, ultimately leading to innovation. Companies are grouped depending on their residual values generated from Danneels' study and analysis. His research observes the ability to predict new market entrance and technology implementation through five company characteristics: constructive conflict, willingness to cannibalize, slack, learning from failure, and various types of environmental scanning. This thesis seeks to find positive relationships between human resource practices and the companies where the model proves to be a good fit. I define human resource practices by the following six categories, breaking them up into incentives and skill development: extra benefits, fitness incentives, social responsibility, and continuous learning, global opportunities, and rewards/opportunities for advancement. This analysis hopes to contribute to further research by generating an association between human resource practices and company innovation.

Submitted by Maicon Juliano Schmidt (maicons) on 2015-04-17T18:00:26Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Cintia Frigo Petuco.pdf: 1959266 bytes, checksum: c47c4257d0b2c1a65a407e9559530c05 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-17T18:00:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cintia Frigo Petuco.pdf: 1959266 bytes, checksum: c47c4257d0b2c1a65a407e9559530c05 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-18 / Nenhuma / A inovação na empresa constantemente assume um dos papéis principais na sua busca por vantagem competitiva, diferenciação e melhores resultados. Por outro lado, a tecnologia da informação (TI) é vista como uma das principais áreas estratégicas da empresa e capaz de apoiar esse processo. Analisar que capacidades da TI contribuem para a inovação na empresa, foi a questão direcionadora desta dissertação. Os objetivos específicos traçados tiveram a finalidade de responder a esse questionamento, detalhando que capacidades da TI estão envolvidas nesse processo, entendendo como a contribuição das mesmas ocorre em relação à inovação na empresa, identificando ainda capacidades da TI inibidoras e capacidades da TI desejáveis, mas incipientes ou ausentes atualmente na empresa. Para isso, o estudo contou previamente com uma revisão da literatura, a fim de esclarecer conceitos e características sobre inovação e empresas inovadoras, bem como recursos e capacidades, enfocando especificamente as capacidades da TI. A partir dessa revisão, um modelo teórico de pesquisa foi elaborado, tornando-se a base para a realização posterior da pesquisa empírica, a qual seguiu uma metodologia qualitativa com estudo de casos múltiplos, sendo analisadas três empresas inovadoras do Sul. Os resultados confirmam parte da base teórica inicial, revelando capacidades adicionais. O estudo demonstra que capacidades de infraestrutura da TI de prover hardwares e plataformas, softwares, rede e telecomunicação, mobilidade e indicadores estratégicos, além das relativas aos seus recursos humanos da TI de entendimento e envolvimento com as áreas de negócios bem como de contribuição com novas ideias, são fatores que colaboram significativamente para a inovação na empresa. Além dessas, a capacidade da TI de viabilizar intangíveis como a gestão da informação e do conhecimento, bem como a de realizar a governança da TI através do planejamento e do controle da TI, cooperam com as capacidades citadas anteriormente, a fim de alcançar o mesmo objetivo. Ainda, capacidades da TI inibidoras da inovação na empresa foram destacadas, como entre outras, os bloqueios de Internet, a fila na TI para atendimento às necessidades da empresa e a falta de apoio e de disponibilização das soluções. Os resultados e as conclusões apresentadas discutem e resumem as situações encontradas nas empresas estudadas, contribuindo significativamente tanto para a área acadêmica quanto para a área de gestão de empresas. Em relação à academia, algumas capacidades da TI contidas no modelo teórico de pesquisa original foram confirmadas, bem como novas capacidades foram encontradas e outras foram indicadas como inibidoras da inovação, ampliando estudos anteriores e tendo potencialidade de servir como base para novos estudos. Ainda, possibilita que os gestores utilizem os resultados apresentados como direcionadores de suas decisões sobre quais capacidades precisam ser continuadas, desenvolvidas, melhoradas ou até mesmo eliminadas na empresa, a fim de contribuirem para sua inovação. / Innovation within a company plays a main role to obtain competitive advantages, differentiation and better results. In this regard, Information Technology (IT) is seen as one of the main company's strategic area and IT is able to support this process. Analyzing the contribution of IT capabilities to company innovation is thus the key issue in this dissertation. The specific objectives here detailed consider how IT capabilities can contribute to innovation, and also indentifying its inhibitory and desirable capabilities. The Literature review found in this paper clarifies some concepts and characteristics about innovation and innovative companies and also elucidates IT resources and capabilities. This theoretical model search has been appliedin an empirical research on the basis of qualitative methodology and multiple cases study using three innovative companies from Rio Grande do Sul/Brazil. The results confirm partially the initial theoretical basis revealing additional capabilities. Seeking factors that could significantly contribute to company innovation, the study shows IT infrastructure capability to provide hardware and platforms, software, networkinfrastructure, mobility and strategic indictors as well as those IT human resources for understanding and involving with business areas and innovative ideas. In this sense, IT enables information and knowledge management and improves governance through planning and controlling. This study also highlights IT’s innovation inhibitor capability in company as, among others, internet blocking, service queue and lack of adequate support and solutions. The results and conclusions here demonstrated discuss and summarize the elements found in the studied companies contributing thereby to academic area and also to business management area. Regarding the Academy some IT capabilities from the original theoretical model search were confirmed and further others localized as innovation inhibitor expanding thus previous studies and contributing to future productions. From the results here shown managers may guide their decisions on continuation, development, improvement and adequation of innovation in company.

Innovation has been considered the critical driver behind economic growth and value creation for a long time. However, in order to achieve an innovative status, the commercializing of an invention is required by injecting capital and strategy. While capital comes in many forms, this thesis focuses on the field of venture capital and how this type of financial backing can be analyzed and managed. Herein, the company characteristics continuum is presented, where business model innovation and technological innovation represent the two extremities. The purpose was then to investigate if there are significant differences in the venture capitalists' investment models as one moves along the aforementioned continuum. Semi-structured interviews were used and interpreted independently by the authors, with respect to coding units, in order to enhance objectivity. The thesis mainly targeted the information technology industry, where analysis was conducted on four of the largest actors on the Nordic venture capital market. The Nordic focus, combined with the rapidly moving industry, resulted in that significant differences, in the venture capitalists' investment models, were identified; giving implications both for theory and practice. These differences were identified as stemming from the initially adopted risk profiles, which then affected all other areas of the investment models. / Innovation har länge ansetts vara den kritiska drivkraften bakom ekonomisk tillväxt och värdeskapande. Emellertid, för att uppnå en innovativ status, krävs kommersialisering av en uppfinning genom att tillföra kapital och strategi. Kapital existerar i flera olika former, dock fokuserar denna uppsats på området riskkapital, och hur denna typ av finansiell backning kan analyseras och hanteras. Häri presenteras kontinuumet för företagskaraktäristik, där innovation inom affärsmodeller och teknik representerar de två ändpunkterna. Syftet var att undersöka om det fanns signifikanta skillnader mellan riskkapitalisters investeringsmodeller, när ett företag rör sig längs det ovan nämnda kontinuumet. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer användes och tolkades oberoende av författarna, genom att använda kodord, för att förbättra objektiviteten. Uppsatsen berör främst företag inom industrin för informationsteknologi, där analys har gjorts på fyra av de största aktörerna inom marknaden för riskkapital i Norden. Ett Nordiskt fokus, kombinerat med en hastigt utvecklande industri, resulterade i att signifikanta skillnader, i riskkapitalisters investeringsmodeller, identifierades; vilket gav implikationer för både teori och praktik. Dessa skillnader identifierades att härstamma från de initialt anammade riskprofilerna, som sedan påverkade alla andra områden inom investeringsmodellen.