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

The increasing number of disability awards is a widespread cause for concern. In a number of countries, among them the Netherlands, this escalation has led in recent years to a sharp increase in disability benefit costs.' At the same time there is stagnation in economic development. To what extent can the growth in the number of disabled persons be accounted for by the deteriorating economic situation? Research at a macro level has indicated that a relationship exists between the deteriorating situation of the labour market, which finds expression in increasing unemployment, and the sharp increase in the disability incidence rate, i.e. the number of disability awards per annum as a percentage of the total number of insured persons (hereafter referred to as the disability incidence rate).* The question being studied here is: which factors are responsible at a meso level (sectors of industry) for the variation in the annual number of disability awards in the private sector? In order to gain some insight into the matter, an analysis was made of the disability incidence rate by sector of industry for the period 1968 to 1979. Table 1 shows that for 1968 various sectors of industry showed considerable variation in the disability incidence rate and that, moreover, there was a sharp divergence in increases in the period 1968 to 1979. The problem is approached by posing two questions. Firstly, which factors explain the considerable differences in the disability incidence rate between the different sectors of industry in 1968? Secondly, to which factors can be attributed the widely diverging development of the disability incidence rate in the various sectors of industry in the period 1968 to 1979?

/pdf/incidence-of-disability-by-sector-of-industry-an-explanation-2u09lfia6l.pdf

Incidence of disability by sector of industry: An explanation

In dit artikel staat de vraag centraal hoe
corporate venturing de dynamiek beinvloedt in de concurrentieomgeving.
Hiertoe is een raamwerk ontwikkeld waarin de
verschillende typen corporate ventures gerelateerd worden aan
de product- en factormarktdynamiek van de onderneming.
Het raamwerk laat zien dat ondernemingen twee strategieen
kunnen volgen wat betreft corporate venturing. Ten eerste,
kiezen voor typen corporate ventures waarbij de huidige marktdynamiek
in stand blijft (bestendiging). Ten tweede, kiezen voor
typen ventures waarbij de bestaande marktdynamiek sterk
toeneemt (verstoring). Het raamwerk verschaft managers inzicht
in de gevolgen van corporate venturing voor de concurrentieomgeving.
Een vergroting van de marktdynamiek vraagt om een
ander, meer flexibel type organisatie. Een beknopte casestudie
naar venture strategieen van de Rabobank en de ING illustreert
de toegevoegde waarde van het ontwikkelde raamwerk.

Corporate venturing en de concurrentieomgeving: Bestendiging of verstoring van de marktdynamiek?

Het veranderende landschap in de Europese financiële sector

Why new business development succeeds or fails: complementary insights from a process perspective (summary)

Developments 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.

Frans van den Bosch

Papers

Incidence of disability by sector of industry: An explanation

Corporate venturing en de concurrentieomgeving: Bestendiging of verstoring van de marktdynamiek?

Het veranderende landschap in de Europese financiële sector

Why new business development succeeds or fails: complementary insights from a process perspective (summary)

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