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

Rotterdam or Anywhere: Relocating Corporate HQ

This paper examines the impact of technical change on European bank costs and profits between 1992 and 2000 The estimates suggest that technological change reduced the total costs of European banks at an average rate of 38% per annum However, technical change reduced profits by 045% annually over the same period As found in an earlier study by Altunbas et al (1999) pure and non-neutral components of technical change appear to have contributed most to the reduction in total cost and the fall in profits Large banks and commercial banks are found to experience the smallest cost reductions but the largest profit gains from technical change Banking systems that experienced the smallest cost reductions seem to have experienced the biggest profit gains In general, the results indicate that technical change can have a differential effect on bank costs and profits While technology can reduce costs as well as increase the revenue earning capacity of banks it seems that some banks focus on the former and others the latter Large cost reductions may feed through into poorer service quality and lower earning capacity and this is presumably why those banks that gained the most on the cost side seem to suffer in terms of profitability Those banks that appear to have small reductions (or increases) in cost as a result of technical change see to gain most in terms of profits The results suggest that there may be a clear trade-off between how technology is implemented in terms of whether the focus is primarily on cost reduction or revenue (and therefore profits) growth To a certain extent, our findings confirm the recent findings on US banking of Berger and Mester (2002) who show that reductions in cost productivity between 1991 and 1997 resulted in increases in profit productivity They argue that banks increased their cost productivity to improve service quality that was reflected in greater profits Our results suggest a similar finding in that those banks that had the smallest cost reductions resulting from technical advances had the largest profit improvements

Convergence and divergence in the european financial services sector: the pace of diffusion of banking technologies and regulations in european financial environments, and strategic behaviour of incumbent financial firms.

Understanding why firms are successful is a very basic question in strategy both from a practitioner and a research perspective. In the strategy and management literature, however, we are confronted with different analytical frameworks, applicable at different levels of analysis such as the industry and the national level, providing different answers! Needless to say there is a clear necessity to create more integrative strategy frameworks. This concluding chapter is devoted to this topic by briefly describing Porter’s contribution to a more integrated and dynamic strategy framework.

/pdf/porter-s-contribution-to-more-general-and-dynamic-strategy-22es4arjld.pdf

Porter's contribution to more general and dynamic strategy frameworks

Inzicht in hoe het simultaan ontwikkelen van nieuwe kennis (exploratie)
en het toepassen van bestaande kennis (exploitatie) binnen ondernemingen
met meerdere bedrijfseenheden bevorderd kan worden, is in de praktijk
en in de theorie nog beperkt. Om hieraan een bijdrage te leveren,
wordt een conceptueel raamwerk ontwikkeld dat belangrijke management-
en organisatiedeterminanten van het proces van horizontale kennisuitwisseling
tussen bedrijfseenheden in beeld brengt.1 Daarbij wordt
onderzocht hoe determinanten als ‘awareness’ van en ‘interest’ in kennisuitwisseling,
‘transfermechanismen’ van kennis, ‘gerelateerde kennis’ en
de ‘organisatievorm’, het exploreren en het exploiteren van kennis kunnen
beinvloeden.

Exploitatie en exploratie van kennis: het managen van de determinanten van horizontale kennisuitwisseling

/pdf/nederland-degradeert-door-gebrek-aan-kennis-en-innovatie-uit-1qi80u9wht.pdf

Frans van den Bosch

Papers

Rotterdam or Anywhere: Relocating Corporate HQ

Convergence and divergence in the european financial services sector: the pace of diffusion of banking technologies and regulations in european financial environments, and strategic behaviour of incumbent financial firms.

Porter's contribution to more general and dynamic strategy frameworks

Exploitatie en exploratie van kennis: het managen van de determinanten van horizontale kennisuitwisseling

Nederland degradeert: door gebrek aan kennis en innovatie uit de wereld top-10