Researchers have used the absorptive capacity construct to explain various organizational phenomena. In this article we review the literature to identify key dimensions of absorptive capacity and offer a reconceptualization of this construct. Building upon the dynamic capabilities view of the firm, we distinguish between a firm's potential and realized capacity. We then advance a model outlining the conditions when the firm's potential and realized capacities can differentially influence the creation and sustenance of its competitive advantage.

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5629&context=lkcsb_research

Absorptive Capacity: A Review, Reconceptualization, and Extension

How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

The Social Psychology of Organizations.

The paper is concerned with spatial clustering of economic activity and its relation to the spatiality of knowledge creation in interactive learning processes. It questions the view that tacit knowledge transfer is confined to local milieus whereas codified knowledge may roam the globe almost frictionlessly. The paper highlights the conditions under which both tacit and codified knowledge can be exchanged locally and globally. A distinction is made between, on the one hand, the learning processes taking place among actors embedded in a community by just being there dubbed buzz and, on the other, the knowledge attained by investing in building channels of communication called pipelines to selected providers located outside the local milieu. It is argued that the co-existence of high levels of buzz and many pipelines may provide firms located in outward-looking and lively clusters with a string of particular advantages not available to outsiders. Finally, some policy implications, stemming from this argumen...

/pdf/clusters-and-knowledge-local-buzz-global-pipelines-and-the-29bsuyvekg.pdf

Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation

How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself withthe master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.

The knowledge-creating company

textFundamental changes in the competitive landscape triggered many firms to leverage and build competencies by focusing on transition processes towards internal network forms of organizing. These forms ameliorate exploration through knowledge creation and transfer.
Internal networks are characterized by horizontal knowledge flows that supplement and
supplant the vertical knowledge flows that characterize other organization forms like the
functional and multi-divisional forms. As these horizontal knowledge flows facilitate
knowledge integration, internal networks have an advantage over other organization forms in
leveraging and building competencies. One characteristic that makes these horizontal
knowledge flows work is the reciprocity ensuing them. Reciprocity relates to the
interdependence and coordination modes that characterize internal networks. As reciprocity is
influenced by managerial coordination, by the intention to deploy knowledge, and by goal
attainment, creating and maintaining reciprocity of knowledge flows can be considered as a managerial competence.
In this paper, the attributes of organization form that impact the reciprocity in a firm are explored from structural, managerial and knowledge perspectives. Hypotheses are developed which suggest that specialization and the use of formal meetings restrict
reciprocity, whereas job rotation, the number of employees with a coordination function, and
teams have a positive effect on the level of reciprocity. These hypotheses are tested by means
of a questionnaire administered in a business unit of a multinational financial services firm.
Reciprocity of knowledge flows was found to be dependent on the characteristics mentioned above in a predicted way. Since none of the hypotheses needed to be rejected, the evidence suggests that reciprocity is a fundamental feature of internal networks and the horizontal knowledge flows that characterize them. This suggests reciprocity to be an important managerial competence.

https://repub.eur.nl/pub/6552/ERS 2005 024 STR.pdf

Reciprocity of Knowledge Flows in Internal Network Forms of Organizing

A Cognitive Perspective on Strategizing/Organizing, Ch. 6

Accessibility is a comprehensive performance measure for the integration between land use and transport systems. In this research, two accessibility measures were applied to evaluate the integration between transport and land use in Hanoi metropolitan area: Vietnam, which has a typical monocentric urban form in the current situation, and Randstad metropolitan area, the Netherlands, which has a typical polycentric urban form. Job accessibility by private and public transport was calculated using the traditional potential accessibility measure corrected for competition of jobs. The results show there is a potential improvement of levels of accessibility in Hanoi through its planned transition into a polycentric urban form. The results illustrate the complex relationship between urban and regional planning and transport, and how spatial knowledge and geographic information system (GIS) tools can be used to provide urban planners, transport planners and engineers in Hanoi with valuable information related to ...

Urban Form and Accessibility to Jobs: A Comparison of Hanoi and Randstad Metropolitan Areas

textDuring the last decade, globalization and liberalization of financial markets, changing societal expectations and corporate governance scandals have increased the attention for the fiduciary duties of non-executive directors. In this context, recent corporate governance reform initiatives have emphasized the control task and independence of non-executive directors. However, little attention has been paid to their impact on the external and internal service tasks of non-executive directors. Therefore, this paper investigates how the service tasks of non-executive directors have evolved in the Netherlands. Data on corporate governance at the top-100 listed companies in the Netherlands between 1997 and 2005 show that the emphasis on non-executive directors’ external service task has shifted to their internal service task, i.e. from non-executive directors acting as boundary spanners to non-executive directors providing advice and counseling to executive directors. This shift in board responsibilities affects non-executive directors’ ability to generate network benefits through board relationships and has implications for non-executive directors’ functional requirements.

/pdf/investigating-the-development-of-the-internal-and-external-g8p1y1t3of.pdf

Investigating the Development of the Internal and External Service Tasks of Non-executive Directors: The Case of the Netherlands (1997-2005)

As a result of many changes in the competitive landscape, knowledge has become a crucial resource of firms, which has impelled firms to change their forms of organizing. Evidence suggests that internal networks, as such an alternative form of organizing, progress to emerge to facilitate the organization and management of knowledge. Insights into how firms actually change into internal networks have been sparse, however. On the basis of three case studies conducted at Rabobank—one at the group level, one at the local member banks, and one at the business unit Spectrum—this paper furnishes this lack of inquiry with new insights. The evidence illustrates that when firms change into internal network forms of organizing, horizontal knowledge flows between subunits are facilitated. 5001-6182 Business 5546-5548.6 Office Organization and Management Library of Congress Classification (LCC) HD 30.2 Office Organization and Management M Business Administration and Business Economics L 20 Firm Objectives, Organization and Behavior: general Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) M19 Business Administration: Other 85 A Business General 270 A 100 G Strategic Management Organizational Growth European Business Schools Library Group (EBSLG) 240 B Information Systems management Gemeenschappelijke Onderwerpsontsluiting (GOO) 85.00 Bedrijfskunde, Organisatiekunde: algemeen 85.10 Strategisch beleid Classification GOO 85.20 Bestuurlijke informatie, informatieverzorging Bedrijfskunde / Bedrijfseconomie Strategisch management, organisatievernieuwing

Frans van den Bosch

Papers

Reciprocity of Knowledge Flows in Internal Network Forms of Organizing

A Cognitive Perspective on Strategizing/Organizing, Ch. 6

Urban Form and Accessibility to Jobs: A Comparison of Hanoi and Randstad Metropolitan Areas

Investigating the Development of the Internal and External Service Tasks of Non-executive Directors: The Case of the Netherlands (1997-2005)

Transition processes towards internal networks: differential paces of change and effects on knowledge flows at rabobank group