UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: A STUDY OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN VIETNAM BY TRAN THI NHU Y MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2016 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: A STUDY OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN VIETNAM A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By TRAN THI NHU Y Academic Supervisor: LE VAN CHON HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2016 DECLARATION “This declaration is to certify that this thesis entitled “The causes and consequences of technological innovation: a study of small and medium enterprises in Vietnam” which is conducted and submitted by me in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of the Master of Arts in Development Economics to the Vietnam – The Netherlands Programme. The thesis constitutes only my original works and due supervision and acknowledgement have been made in the text to all materials used.” Tran Thi Nhu Y i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completing this thesis is a challenging and interesting journey as well. I found the research field that I would love to dedicate in and am proud of the outcome. In this journey, I find myself lucky and honor to have the companionship of respected and generous people.
Foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks and my deep respect to my supervisor, Dr. Le Van Chon. His wisdom and coaching always encourage me to embrace challenges and do right things. He is always accessible and generous to answer and explain thoroughly all my questions despite my partly weird available time due to my business schedule.
I am grateful for the valuable comments on my thesis research design from Dr. Pham Khanh Nam and Dr. Vu Viet Quang. My gratitude to Dr.
Truong Dang Thuy for his straight forward suggestion to the very first draft of my thesis. With it, I could go this far. I am blessed with the encouragement of my classmates, especially those that VNP Office call them “my group”. They are smart, studious and good friends who are always available when I need them.
They are Phuong Lan to support me with the regression test, Que Anh to provide me the sources for searching data, Anh Thu Truong, Anh Thu Le, Thao Nguyen, Thanh An and Tuong Vy to listen to me and encourage me continuously. Next, VNP Office are one of the best service team I have ever known. Its kindness and professionalism let me really enjoy the time learning here. My family is the precious source of encouragement and support.
Finally, it’s my profound thanks to a special person who lets me see the importance of the thesis and shares every of my concerns and joy, his name is Cuong. Thank you for all the best you gave me. I am committed to this thesis enthusiastically and joyfully with your companionship, and I hope that this thesis could make you proud. ii ABBREVIATIONS MSME: Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise OECD: The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development R&D: Research and Development SME: Small and Medium Enterprise iii ABSTRACT Innovation has been long considered as a paradigm of achieving economic growth and sustaining nations’ wealth.
In which, technological innovation, including both product and process innovation, plays a crucial part, especially in the knowledge economy. Collecting data from the non-state manufacturing SMEs survey in 2011 and 2013, this study conduct an empirical research to find the causes and consequences of technological innovation at firm level. The analysis of causes to technological innovation is divided into three areas: firm characteristics, internal innovation factors and external innovation factors. Except for firm age which is negatively associated to innovation occurrence, others factors are positively correlated, including firm size, employees with degree, innovation expenditure, R&D investment, spillover pressure from suppliers and customers, industry network and competition level.
Concerning the influence of innovation on firm performance, the empirical result shows evidence for a positive impact while suggesting a new approach to resolve the simultaneous causality between these two concepts. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION.3 The scope of the study .4 Structure of the study. 4 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Definition and classification of innovation .1 Definition of innovation .2 Main types of innovation .2 The causes of technological innovations .1 Firm characteristics and technological innovation .2 Internal innovation factors .3 External innovation factors .3 Technological innovation’s impact on firm performance. The conceptual framework.
23 Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .1 Equation 1: The causes of technological innovation .2 Equation 2: The impact of innovation on firm performance. 29 Chapter 4: EMPIRICAL RESULTS .1 The measurement of innovation .2 The impact of innovation on firm performance .1 Implications for SMEs .2 Implications for government.3 Limitations and future researches. 51 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Number of MSMEs in Vietnam .1 The causes of firm-level technological innovation .1 The recorded time of revenue and innovation variables for the year in question of 2013. 33 LIST OF TABLES Table 4.2 The correlation matrix .3 Panel data structure .4 Percentage of innovators by firm size.5 Percentage of innovators by firm age .6 The presence of R&D investment, Spillover pressure from suppliers or customers, industry network and competition .7 Regression results and marginal effect controlling for the robustness for the sources of innovation .8 Regression results with random effect and fixed effect .9 Hausman test for random effect and fixed effect model .10 Summary of firm facing competition and firm facing no competition .11 Regression results of competition and non-competition group.
44 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem statement The significant contribution of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to the economic growth has been historically recorded, especially its role in providing employment opportunities. Due to the fact of lacking update from the national statistics on MSMEs in Vietnam since January 2013, the most recent report of Asian Development Bank (2014) utilizes the figures of the year of 2012 and shows that in 2012, there were in total 333,835 MSMEs in operations, accounting for 97.7% of the total enterprises that paid corporate tax.1 Number of MSMEs in Vietnam Source: Asian Development Bank (2014) 1 The MSME sector employed 5.1 million workers in 2012 and accounted for 46.8% of the total workforce in the country. The sector observes an increase of number and employees of 5.4% respectively after five years of two-digit growth (from 2007 to 2011). Though the percentage of labor in the MSME sector is not adequate to the dominant number of MSMEs in Vietnam, it is undeniable that MSMEs take a crucial contribution to the national economy.
Among MSMEs in Vietnam, though taking only 15.7% of total active MSMEs in 2012 – after the wholesale & retail trade and service sectors accounting for 39.5% respectively, manufacturing is a labor-intensive industry, employing majority of employees in the MSME sector, 31.8% of total MSME employees, 14.9% of total domestic workforce. This figure partly shows the important role of manufacturing MSMEs in the economy. In the recent time, manufacturing companies are faced with unstable economic environment with frequent shocks and increasingly fierce competition. Moreover, the knowledge-based mechanism, which has been ignited since 1990s, has evolved the market place to be more dynamic and competitive.
To some extent innovation can be acknowledged as an inevitable means for firms to increase their competitiveness in adapting to the requirements of this challenging and unstable environment. From long ago, Schumpeter (1950) recommends that firms innovate for refreshing their asset value. Even before this, at the time that the “innovation” term may not have been popularly used, researchers admit the important role of economic and technological change (Lorenzi et al. Firms have been forced to focus on their business strategies, especially their direction towards innovative activities to cope with the progressively fierce global competition after 1980s (Hodgetts et al.
Also, due to that tenacious situation, at present, both individuals and companies start to assess and 2 adapt the paradigm of innovation strategies as well as entrepreneurship capability for gaining competitive advantages (Drucker, 1985; Hult et al. There is an apparent escalation of interest in innovation, its processes as well as its impacts. Innovation is in need for organization for responding to shifts in customer demands and lifestyles over different periods and to seize opportunities created from technology and dynamic changes. Along with strategic differences, the innovations strongly characterize the current dynamic competition (Porter, 2000).
Consistently, the researches of Bettis and Hitt, 1995; Helfat and Peteraf, 2003 and Voss, 1994 show that firm performance and competitive advantages critically rely on its capability of generating, developing and exploiting innovation. This trend of innovation which benefits firm performance is, with high probability, applicable for large-size or high technology enterprises where the available capability for continuous improvements are resourceful. However, whether innovation takes an integral part in the success of small and medium manufacturing enterprises whose investment capability for innovations is extremely limited is still in questions. The research on this matter is even scarcer for the developing countries where the technology content of circulated products and services are lower than highly developed countries.
With the spirit of filling the above-mentioned research gap, this study utilizes the data taken from the Survey of Small and Medium Scale Manufacturing Enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam to delve into the value chain of innovation, from the causes of innovation to its consequences to firm performance of the enterprises in questions. Firstly, the study evaluates the causes of innovations, from firm characteristics, internal innovation factors and external innovation factors. Secondly, the impact of innovation on firm performance is revealed with the solutions for the inherent endogeneity problems between innovation and firm performance. Lastly, based on the acknowledgement of the causes and consequences of innovation, 3 suggestions for promoting and for fruitful implementing innovations are proposed for attaining higher firm performance.2 Research questions The primary goal of this study is to estimate the impact extent of innovation performance and to define the key factors for firms in deciding the deployment of innovation.
Using the panel data of MSMEs in Vietnam, the study concentrates on three main questions: First, what are the causes of innovation, delving into the firm characteristics, the internal innovation factors and the external innovation requirement? Second, what are the consequences of innovation on firm performance? Last, what are the suggestions to promote innovations amongst MSMEs and to take full advantages of those innovations? 1.3 The scope of the study The study uses the dataset taken from the Small and Medium Enterprises Survey conducted by the collaboration of the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) of the University of Copenhagen and several parties from Vietnam. Gathering the separate data from the four SMEs surveys carried out in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013, the research forms a panel data consisting two years of 2011 and 2013 covering small and medium-sized non-state manufacturing enterprises of ten provinces Vietnam. Named SMEs survey, however, this survey also consists the micro enterprises with less than and equal to ten employees.4 Structure of the study This research about innovation consists of five chapters. Following this first chapter of introduction for research motivation and overall information about the study, Chapter 2 4 represents the critical literature review on the definition and classification of innovation, the causes of innovation, its effect on firm performance, and the conceptual framework.
Next, the research methodology in Chapter 3 specifies the model and approach to examine the effect of innovation on firm performance as well as to evaluate the different factors driving innovation.