A firm-industry analysis of services versus manufacturing

  1. Esteban Fernández 1
  2. Vicente López-López 2
  3. Carlos M. Jardón 3
  4. Susana Iglesias-Antelo 4
  1. 1 Universidad de Oviedo
    info

    Universidad de Oviedo

    Oviedo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/006gksa02

  2. 2 Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
    info

    Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

    Santiago de Compostela, España

    ROR https://ror.org/030eybx10

  3. 3 Universidade de Vigo
    info

    Universidade de Vigo

    Vigo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/05rdf8595

  4. 4 Universidade da Coruña
    info

    Universidade da Coruña

    La Coruña, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01qckj285

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Journal:
European Research on Management and Business Economics

ISSN: 2444-8834

Year of publication: 2022

Volume: 28

Issue: 1

Pages: 108-117

Type: Article

DOI: 10.1016/J.IEDEEN.2021.100181 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

More publications in: European Research on Management and Business Economics

Abstract

In the literature on the firm-industry debate to explain organizational performance the firm effect has been more supported than the industry effect by empirical studies, mainly focused on manufacturing firms and long time periods. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the service sector. In this paper we study separately manufacturing and services in a broad sample of Spanish companies. We observe that in manufacturing the firm effect outweighs the industry effect while in services the opposite is the case in a ten-year period. However, when we split the time horizon into two five-year sub-periods, this behavior only remains in the second one, of moderate economic growth. In the first one, of strong economic growth, the firm effect prevails for both manufacturing and services. These findings underline the importance of the industry effect for services, suggesting that such effect may have been underestimated in the literature, as well as that of the level of economic growth specially for the decision-making of practitioners.

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