This article analyses how the intrapreneur’s demographic characteristics and personal values influence innovation performance in small creative firms. We demonstrate that the intrapreneur’s previous experience in developing and commercializing creative products and services, together with an entrepreneurial value system (EVS), constitute characteristics that positively affect a firm’s innovation performance. This article makes two main contributions. First, research on factors that stimulate innovation in small creative firms is scarce. Second, the article applies a cognitive approach integrating demographic characteristics and personal values, aspects that are rarely jointly explored in entrepreneurship research.

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to review and compare traditional and new institutional postulates in order to address some of the criticism that this theory has received. Design/methodology/approach – Throughout this paper, five interesting paradoxes are presented in management contexts of change, the creation of competitive advantages, and organizational behaviour. Findings – Light is shed on the integration efforts that seek to combine institutional theory with transaction cost theory, the resource-based view of the firm, and the resource dependence theory. Originality/value – The paper reviews the Oliver contribution work done around neoinstitutional theory. The paper offers a different view of organizational change, the creation of competitive advantage, and organizational behaviour.

The goal of the article is to present the results of an exploratory study that analyses a sample of business students from two geographically separated regions (the North-East and the South-West) in Spain, to establish if different sub-cultures can be detected within one country, taking into account work and life values. Measures of culture (defined by a set of work and life values) were constructed, and data were obtained from 653 business students in these two distinct geographical locations. Results suggested in an indirect manner that the universal theory of culture as proposed by Hofstede and other colleagues was not entirely confirmed in the Spanish context. Variances along the set of eight value factors emerging as the underlying structure of culture (four work values and four life values) were widely spread, and significant differences in values were found for the two locations. Moreover, an individual difference, gender, was found to play a major role in attributing importance to various work and life values. Findings emphasize the importance of diverse sub-cultures within a single country (Spain), and the article explores the implications for management practices and research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the educational level and diversity of a firm's top management team (TMT), moderated by strategic consensus, influence its innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach – Using Poisson regression analysis, the proposed models were tested on 97 innovative Spanish firms selected from the Dun and Bradstreet database of 2000. Findings – Results show that a higher educational level in the TMT has a positive and direct effect on innovation performance, while functional diversity and diversity in TMT tenure have a direct and negative effect. However, in a situation of strategic consensus in the TMT, the relationship between functional diversity and innovation is positive. Originality/value – The paper makes several contributions to previous research. First, few studies have considered the influence of the characteristics and composition of the TMT on the organization's innovation performance. Second, this paper responds to the calls of researchers to enrich the upper echelon theory by considering strategic consensus as a process of interaction between the members of the TMT that modifies the relationship between TMT diversity and the firm's innovation performance.