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

Inleiding. Niets is zo praktisch als een goede theorie. En dit geldt ook voor bedrijfskunde
als een recente tak van wetenschap. Bedrijfskunde heeft immers als object van studie het vanuit managementsoogpunt benaderen van het functioneren van formele organisaties in relatie tot hun omgeving. Dit ogenschijnlijk praktische vraagstuk blijkt geen eenvoudige opgave te zijn. Goede theorieen zijn daarbij onontbeerlijk.

/pdf/over-de-grenzen-van-organisaties-xtq9rs5naq.pdf

Over de grenzen van organisaties

Fundamental 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.

Reciprocity of Knowledge Flows in Internal Network Forms of Organizing

textInleiding. In discussies over corporate
governance en
ondernemingsdoelstellingen
woedt een
strijd tussen twee uitersten.
Aanhangers van het
stockholdermodel vinden
dat het management
uitsluitend verantwoording
moet afleggen aan de
aandeelhouders, terwijl
anderen argumenteren voor
het stakeholdermodel,
waarin het management de
belangen van vele
belanghebbenden tegelijk
in het oog moet houden. In
de praktijk overlappen
beide modellen elkaar. stockholders versus
stakeholders onttrekken
het zicht op de complexiteit
van stakeholdermanagement,
de inzet die
daarbij gepleegd moet
worden door het
management alsmede de
daaraan verbonden
uitdagingen.
Case-studies over
stakeholder-management
kunnen deze complexiteit
belichten en mede daardoor
inzicht verschaffen in de
merites van het
stakeholdermodel voor het
management. Dit artikel
wil daartoe een bijdrage
leveren door eerst aan de
hand van een bekend
framework een kort
theoretisch overzicht te
geven van stakeholdermanagement.
Vervolgens
komt een beknopte casestudie
aan de orde waarin nieuwe vormen van
stakeholder-management
worden beschreven. De
case-studie beschrijft het
proces van de strategische
besluitvorming en het
stakeholder-management
inzake het megaproject
Per+, de grootscheepse
modernisering van Shell's
olieraffinaderij in
Pernis/Rotterdam. De
nadruk ligt daarbij op het
combineren van intern en
extern stakeholdermanagement
en op de vraag
welke nieuwe
managementinzichten
daaraan zijn te ontlenen
voor de proces- en
transactie-dimensie van
stakeholder-management.

/pdf/stakeholders-en-management-een-case-studie-1o9y9tfkgt.pdf

Stakeholders en management: een case-studie

Managing through projects has become important for generating new knowledge to cope with technological and market discontinuities. This paper examines how the fit between the creation of technological and market knowledge and important project management characteristics, i.e. project autonomy and completion criteria, influences the success of new business development (NBD) projects. In-depth longitudinal case research on NBD projects commercialised from 1993 to 2003 in the consumer electronics industry highlights that project management characteristics focusing only on the creation of technological knowledge contributed to the failure of those NBD projects that required new market knowledge as well. The findings indicate that senior management support and engaging in an alliance with partners possessing complementary market knowledge can offset this misalignment of the organisation of NBD projects.

Why new business development projects fail : coping with the differences of technological versus market knowledge

Introduction. 
Interorganizational relationships consist of several stages, such as a search and selection stage, a negotiation stage, and a contracting stage (e.g. Jap and Ganesan, 2000; Reuer, 1999, 2000). Each of these stages corresponds with distinct governance decisions, which collectively enable partners to achieve coordination and control during the life-cycle of their relationships.
Hitherto, however, little research has examined the use of multiple mechanisms to structure exchange relationships (Jap and Ganesan, 2000), and studies on sequences of successive governance decisions are still rare in the literature (Long etal., 2002; Narayandas and Rangan, 2004). This has led to a significant gap in our understanding of interorganizational governance.
This chapter therefore focuses on the following research question: How are interorganizational relationships governed during different stages of cooperation, and how are the governance decisions In these stages related

/pdf/interorganizational-governance-trajectories-toward-a-better-y0qlwh2fy0.pdf

Frans van den Bosch

Papers

Over de grenzen van organisaties

Reciprocity of Knowledge Flows in Internal Network Forms of Organizing

Stakeholders en management: een case-studie

Why new business development projects fail : coping with the differences of technological versus market knowledge

Interorganizational Governance Trajectories: Toward a Better Understanding of the Connections between Partner Selection, Negotiation and Contracting