Impacto del SENA en la innovación de las empresas manufactureras en Colombia: Una mirada desde la ambidestreza organizacional

The National Training Service (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje - SENA) is an entity of integral professional training of technologists and labor technicians in Colombia. SENA also provides technological services and participates in innovation projects with companies. In this sense, this research is about whether collaboration with SENA in innovation projects has significant effects on capabilities and performance of manufacturing companies, by means of an empirical study from a sample of 281 companies. To do this, it is used as a frame of reference the paradigm of organizational ambidexterity, which states that organizations can carry out exploitation and exploration innovation activities simultaneously to improve their performance. In the present study, we use the knowledgebased theory of the firm, resource-based theory of the firm, and transaction costs theory to study the collaboration. The results obtained suggest that companies that collaborate to innovate in exploitation activities with SENA have higher levels of exploration, alliance capability, co-exploitation, co-exploration, and performance in terms of profitability than the ones that do not. As for those companies that collaborate to innovate in exploration activities with SENA have higher levels of exploration, alliance capability, coexploitation, co-exploration, and performance in terms of profitability and sales than those that do not. This is relevant since companies can consider the collaborative partnerships to innovate with SENA, as an alternative to improve their capabilities and performance.