Modelo de práticas organizacionais adotadas por pequenas e médias empresas inovadoras do Brasil

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) constitute an important group of organizations in all societies and their capacity for innovation varies significantly, depending on factors such as location, size, financial capacity or socioeconomic situations. In this sense, practices adopted by innovative SMEs from developed countries or even suggested from the experiences of large organizations may not reflect the reality of Brazilian SMEs. Thus, the general objective of this research was to develop a conceptual model of organizational practices adopted by innovative Small and Medium Enterprises operating in Brazil. For this, a qualitative study with descriptive and exploratory design was performed. After an extensive international literature review, we identified 13 practices positively associated with SMEs innovative performance. Six practices were classified as macro environmental: (1) participation in business networks, (2) use of public funding, (3) cooperation/collaboration with customers and suppliers, (4) cooperation/collaboration with universities and research institutes, (5) presence on the international market, (6) company localization in an innovative environment; and seven practices such as microenvironments (7) organizational learning skills, (8) employee empowerment, (9) R&D investments, (10) knowledge management, (11) innovative CEO posture, (12) customer orientation, and (13) use of Information Technology. From these 13 practices, an interview script was elaborated and refined, being applied to 13 finalist SMEs of National Innovation Award (editions 2012 to 2014) through in-depth interviews. Dialogues took place in person and through technological resource. In the end, 15 organizational practices proved to be true and/or emerged from the interviews, being able to integrate the conceptual model elaborated. Regarding macro-environmental practices, the first one (1) was not true; the practice (3) was divided into “cooperation/collaboration with clients” and “cooperation/collaboration with suppliers” (since not all companies that maintains cooperation/collaboration with clients also maintains relationships with suppliers and vice versa); and practice (6) has been replaced by “business location near the logistics chain”. The other micro environmental practices proved to be true. Regarding microenvironment, practice (7) has been replaced by “manager's learning ability” and “employee learning ability”; the practice (9) has been replaced by “people dedicated to R&D” and “resources devoted to R&D” (some companies only allocate people to this activity or only invest resources); the practice (10) was replaced by “collecting and storing information in a database” and practice (11) was changed to “the CEO's willingness to take risks” - the other practices being confirmed according to the initial interview script. At the same time that the majority of the organizational practices identified in the international literature were verified in the participating SMEs, different conceptions on some themes emerged, resulting in new contributions to literature - in addition to the elaborated conceptual model.