Scholars of the theory of the firm have begun to emphasize the sources and conditions of what has been described as “the organizational advantage,” rather than focus on the causes and consequences of market failure. Typically, researchers see such organizational advantage as accruing from the particular capabilities organizations have for creating and sharing knowledge. In this article we seek to contribute to this body of work by developing the following arguments: (1) social capital facilitates the creation of new intellectual capital; (2) organizations, as institutional settings, are conducive to the development of high levels of social capital; and (3) it is because of their more dense social capital that firms, within certain limits, have an advantage over markets in creating and sharing intellectual capital. We present a model that incorporates this overall argument in the form of a series of hypothesized relationships between different dimensions of social capital and the main mechanisms and proces...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259373.pdf

Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage

Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

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

Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

Knowledge-intensive firms are composed of multiple communities with specialized expertise, and are often characterized by lateral rather than hierarchical organizational forms. We argue that producing knowledge to create innovative products and processes in such firms requires the ability to make strong perspectives within a community, as well as the ability to take the perspective of another into account. We present models of language, communication and cognition that can assist in the design of electronic communication systems for perspective making and perspective taking. By appreciating how communication is both like a language game played in a local community and also like a transmission of messages through a conduit, and by appreciating how cognition includes a capacity to narrativize our experience as well as a capacity to process information, we identify some guidelines for designing electronic communication systems to support knowledge work. The communication systems we propose emphasize that narratives can help construct strong perspectives within a community of knowing, and that reflecting upon and representing that perspective can create boundary objects which allow for perspective taking between communities. We conclude by describing our vision of an idealized knowledge intensive firm with a strong culture of perspective making and perspective taking, and by identifying some elements of the electronic communication systems we would expect to see in such a firm.

Perspective Making and Perspective Taking in Communities of Knowing

Our era is one of increasingly pervasive digital technologies, which penetrate deeply into the very core of the products, services, and operations of many organizations and radically change the nature of product and service innovations. The fundamental properties of digital technology are reprogrammability and data homogenization. Together, they provide an environment of open and flexible affordances that are used in creating innovations characterized by convergence and generativity. An analysis of convergence and generativity observed in innovations with pervasive digital technologies reveals three traits: (1) the importance of digital technology platforms, (2) the emergence of distributed innovations, and (3) the prevalence of combinatorial innovation. Each of the six articles in this special issue relates to one or more of these three traits. In this essay, we explore the organizational research implications of these three digital innovation traits and identify research opportunities for organization science scholars. Examples from the articles in this special issue on organizing for innovation in the digitized world are used to demonstrate the kind of organizational scholarship that can faithfully reflect and inform innovation in a world of pervasive digital technologies.

Organizing for Innovation in the Digitized World

Changes in the technologies of representation in a heterogeneous, distributed sociotechnical system, such as a large construction project, can instigate a complex pattern of innovations in technologies, practices, structures, and strategies. We studied the adoption of digital three-dimensional (3-D) representations in the building projects of the architect Frank O. Gehry, and observed that multiple, heterogeneous firms in those projects produced diverse innovations, each of which created a wake of innovation. Together, these multiple wakes of innovation produce a complex landscape of innovations with unpredictable peaks and valleys. Gehry's adoption of digital 3-D representations disturbed the ecology of interactions and stimulated innovations in his project networks by: providing path-creating innovation trajectories in separate communities of practice, creating trading zones where communities could create knowledge about diverse innovations, and offering a means for intercalating innovations across heterogeneous communities. Our study suggests that changes in digital representations that are central to the functioning of a distributed system can engender multiple innovations in technologies, work practices, and knowledge across multiple communities, each of which is following its own distinctive tempo and trajectory.

Wakes of Innovation in Project Networks: The Case of Digital 3-D Representations in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

From the Publisher:
Contains critical contributions by seventeen scholars, each writing on a different issue of major importance to information systems research. The book is divided into two sections. In Part I, chapters present a broad view of practice, including its sociology of knowledge, the responsibility of its professionals, and the effectiveness of its tools and procedures. In Part II, chapters focus on the social context of information systems. Contributors address the way we think about and research the organizational antecedents and consequences of information systems, their diffusion, and our ability to understand their repercussions in the wider network of changing social relations. Topics covered include semantics, systems analysis, system design, software engineering models, managerial expert systems, information systems in organization theory, a research agenda for a transaction cost approach to information systems, and much more.

Critical Issues in Information Systems Research

The premise of this book is that managers should act not only as decision makers, but also as designers. In a series of essays from a multitude of disciplines, the authors develop a theory of the design attitude in contrast to the more traditionally accepted and practiced decision attitude.

Richard J. Boland

Papers

Perspective Making and Perspective Taking in Communities of Knowing

Organizing for Innovation in the Digitized World

Wakes of Innovation in Project Networks: The Case of Digital 3-D Representations in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

Critical Issues in Information Systems Research

Managing as Designing