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...

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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

textDevelopments in information technology (IT) are perceived to promote interorganizational cooperation within and across industry boundaries. IT-enabled cooperation has challenged the creation of interorganizational competitive advantages, as conceptualized in the Relational View (e.g., Dyer and Singh, 1998). The relationship between IT and the conversion of inter-firm value-creating opportunities into interorganizational competitive advantage is still unclear. In this paper, we have developed a conceptual framework regarding the relationship between IT and interorganizational resource complementarity, which is an important determinant of interorganizational competitive advantage. Our analysis suggests that cooperating organizations need to develop three distinctive but interrelated capabilities in order to effectuate interorganizational resource complementarity with regard to IT. We propose that these capabilities form a pre-condition for achieving interorganizational competitive advantage by means of IT-enabled interorganizational relationships. Preliminary support for our framework and proposition is provided by a case study of an interorganizational relationship between a large European financial services firm and a major European telecommunication firm.

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Required IT-Related Capabilities For The Utilization of New Opportunities in Creating Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

ERIM Report Series reference number ERS-2000-41-STR Publication status / version draft / version October 2000 Number of pages 33 Email address first author M.Hensmans@fbk.eur.nl Address Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) Rotterdam School of Management / Faculteit Bedrijfskunde Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam PoBox 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands Phone: # 31-(0) 10-408 1182 Fax: # 31-(0) 10-408 9640 Email: info@erim.eur.nl Internet: www.erim.eur.nl

/pdf/emerging-on-line-financial-services-complex-3zjh7pkpg4.pdf

Emerging on-line financial services complex

If a published paper is confronted with a criticalrejoinder regarding the research question and ﬁnd-ings, this may indicate various possibilities. First,the paper is (partly) incorrect. As we will argue thisis not so in the case of our paper. Second, the paper’smessage is not clearly communicated, which is al-ways to some extent the case. Third, the author ofthe rejoinder simply takes another perspective as op-posed to the one used in the paper. Subsequently hestarts criticizing the paper from the point of view thathis perspective and the associated references, analy-sis and results are really missing and, therefore, thepaper provides no new insights.We believe the rejoinder primarily belongs to thisthird category. Without explicitly emphasizing hisperspective, Dr. Curwen seems to take a descriptiveapproach and uses the industry as the main level ofanalysis. Our paper uses theoretical frameworksaimed at explanation and focuses on a ﬁrm level ofanalysis. Our paper’s aim is, therefore, not to providea rich description but to use theory-driven frameworksaimed at explaining ﬁrm behavior. Dr. Curwen, how-ever, does not say a single word about our theoreticalframework but starts immediately ridiculing our re-search question and ﬁndings. In doing so, he doesnot provide empirical evidence regarding our re-search question or theoretical arguments to supporthis view, apart from a reference to those who are:‘fully conversant with the telecommunicationsindustry in the 1990s (Curwen, 2004, last page ofhis rejoinder).Remarkably, Dr. Curwen used a similar attack on an-other paper about the telecom industry published inthis journal (Curwen, 2001). In their reply, theauthors of that paper emphasized that Dr. Curwenbased his comments largely on (1) misreading theirpaper (‘Misconception of the Purpose’), on (2) inap-propriate analysis, and on (3) not providing anempirical refutation of their paper ‘because he baseshis claims on weak evidence.’ (Jamison and Chan-Olmsted, 2002:96). In our reply we will address thesethree issues as well.Wewill ﬁrst elaborateonthe obviouspoint thatusingdifferent perspectives produces different results. Sec-ond, we will reﬂect on the main issues raised in therejoinder. Finally, we will conclude by emphasizingthat industry experts, as Dr. Curwen claims to be,do not possess any kind of monopoly on understand-ing ‘their’ industry. On the contrary, we and manyother scholars believe that the scientiﬁc understand-ing of phenomena like the strategic renewal of estab-lished ﬁrms make real progress by both respectingother scientiﬁc approaches and by trying to reconcilethe insights gained. In doing so, they may really helpmanagers, employees, and other stakeholders.

Strategic renewal of Europe's largest telecom operations (1992 -2001) : A reply to Curwen

textStrategische vernieuwing in ondernemingen
staat hoog op de agenda van managers en onderzoekers. De
aandacht voor nonprofit-organisaties in dit verband is echter
beperkt. Zo is er weinig bekend over de mate, de oorzaken en de
implicaties van strategische vernieuwing. Dit artikel gaat in op dit
thema. Met behulp van een enquete en twee casestudies wordt
voor het eerst de vernieuwingsdynamiek van Nederlandse
nonprofit-organisaties in kaart gebracht. De resultaten laten zien
dat strategische vernieuwing door nonprofit-organisaties leidt
tot een hoger prestatieniveau. Druk vanuit het management en/
of bestuur en druk vanuit de sociale omgeving blijken belangrijke
determinanten voor de mate van strategische vernieuwing

/pdf/strategische-vernieuwing-in-nederlandse-non-profit-4tyt911osm.pdf

Frans van den Bosch

Papers

Required IT-Related Capabilities For The Utilization of New Opportunities in Creating Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

Emerging on-line financial services complex

Strategic renewal of Europe's largest telecom operations (1992 -2001) : A reply to Curwen

Strategische vernieuwing in Nederlandse non-profit organisaties

Economic aspects of financing social security pensions