Extending the Knowledge-based View: An Examination of Intellectual Property Strategies in Australian Biotechnology Firms

Knowledge management (KM) approaches have developed traditionally from the knowledge-based view (KBV), a derivative of the resource-based view (RBV). Drawing on the relational and industry structure views, this paper presents a framework for analysing knowledge management practices in the biotechnology industry. These firms exhibit sophisticated and strategic KM practices and deploy a range of strategies in leveraging competitive advantage through their intellectual property practices. The paper demonstrates that the current KBV needs to be modified and extended to reflect current KM practice within Australian biotechnology firms through examining their use and management of intellectual property.     

Externalities of openness in innovation

Discussion of open innovation has typically stressed the benefits to the individual enterprise from boundary-spanning linkages and improved internal knowledge sharing. In this paper we explore the potential for wider benefits from openness in innovation and argue that openness may itself generate positive externalities by enabling improved knowledge diffusion. The potential for these (positive) externalities suggests a divergence between the private and social returns to openness and the potential for a sub-optimal level of openness where this is determined purely by firms’ private returns. Our analysis is based on Irish plant-level panel data from manufacturing industry over the period 1994–2008. Based on instrumental variables regression models our results suggest that externalities of openness in innovation are significant and that they are positively associated with firms’ innovation performance. We find that these externality effects are unlikely to work through their effect on the spread of open innovation practices. Instead, they appear to positively influence innovation outputs by either increasing knowledge diffusion or strengthening competition. Our evidence on the significance of externalities from openness in innovation provides a rationale for public policy aimed at promoting open innovation practices among firms.     

The nexus between innovativeness and knowledge management: A focus on firm performance in the hospitality sector

While the importance of knowledge management is increasingly acknowledged, many firms do not fully understand the significance of innovativeness in relation to knowledge management and firm performance. Consequently, the objective of this article is to investigate innovativeness and its relationship with knowledge management and organizational performance in an under-examined industry sector and country context. The study methodology was survey-based and took place in the hospitality industry sector in Lesotho, Africa. Findings highlight the importance of knowledge management practices as an important driver of firm performance, where the results emphasize the positive mediating effect of innovativeness on the relationship between knowledge management and firm performance. The study has important practitioner and policy implications, where it is recommended that knowledge management be utilized in conjunction with innovativeness so as to positively influence firm performance. The article delivers a novel contribution to the literature in terms of establishing empirical associations between knowledge management, innovativeness and firm performance in an emerging country context.     

Knowledge integration in the shadow of tacit spillovers: Empirical evidence from U.S. R&D labs

Integrating knowledge across a firm's value chain (e.g. between R&D, marketing and manufacturing functions), which we denote “Knowledge Integration” (KI), has been consistently found to be a strong predictor of product innovation performance in the management literature. Such cross-functional integration does not occur by chance, but by design, as a result of managerial practices and organizational arrangements. The significant heterogeneity characterizing the diffusion of cross-functional integration across firms is suggestive of the well-known tension between internal and external diffusion of knowledge. In this paper, we argue that the hidden cost of KI is to expose firms to a higher risk of knowledge leakages and provide the first systematic empirical evidence of this apparent tension between internal and external knowledge flows. Based on data from the CMU Survey (one of the rare datasets offering observables on both sides of the tension for a representative set of R&D active firms in the US), we investigate the impact of knowledge spillovers to competitors on internal cross-functional knowledge integration involving the R&D function among manufacturing firms. We find that the intensity of (tacit) R&D knowledge spillovers at the industry-level has a negative and significant impact on the likelihood that firms adopt or achieve KI. Our results therefore suggest that firms may trade their optimal innovative performance against superior appropriability of their rents.     

Patterns of gaining and sharing of knowledge about customers: a study of an Express Parcel Delivery Company

Knowledge sharing is an acknowledged pre-requisite for effective knowledge management. There is an extensive literature upon knowledge sharing practices and potential barriers. There is increasing recognition of the value of knowledge about customers within organisations. There are often several distinct avenues through which such knowledge is channelled. An assessment tool of knowledge flows is used to identify patterns in knowledge sharing for different facets of knowledge about customers within a case study organisation. An analysis is undertaken of sharing of knowledge about customers among customer service, sales and operations management teams, within the teams with peers, horizontally with other teams, and vertically within the organisation. The study demonstrates that it is possible to identify patterns of sharing knowledge about customers. The research highlights the value of the approach towards analysing knowledge sharing in organisations generally.     

An empirical investigation of knowledge management and innovative performance: The case of alliances

This paper examines firm-level performance implications of strategic alliances by employing knowledge management practices as intermediaries. Unlike previous research which focuses on partner firm factors, this study investigates how alliance characteristics (i.e., alliance scope and governance) affect interfirm knowledge sharing and creation, and how these two practices and their interaction in turn affect innovative performance. These questions are examined in a sample of 127 German partnering firms. Results show that joint ventures as opposed to contractual alliances are more effective and influential in facilitating knowledge sharing and creation. In contrast, the scope of alliance activities, while positively associated with knowledge sharing, has no direct relationship with knowledge creation. In addition to these results, the study also finds that knowledge sharing, knowledge creation and their interaction significantly contribute to partner firms’ innovative performance.     

Maturity model of Knowledge Management in the interpretativist perspective

Many authors have proposed categorizations for approaches to Knowledge Management; outstanding prospects including functionalist and interpretativist. In the first approach, knowledge is considered as a “static object” that exists in a number of ways and locations; in the second one, knowledge does not exist independently of human experience, social practice, of knowledge itself and its use, where it is shared by the social practices of communities, because it is “dynamic and active”. These articles constitute an extensive review on the subject, focused in reviewing, analyzing and presenting a study of the interpretativist perspective, and describe a maturity model for KM operational from it.     

When do firms rely on their knowledge spillover recipients for guidance in exploring unfamiliar knowledge?

Knowledge spillover occurs when recipient firms combine the knowledge of an originating firm with other knowledge. When recipient firms combine the originating firm's knowledge with knowledge that is unfamiliar to the originating firm, the recipient firms potentially provide insight to the originating firm on the viability of exploring such knowledge. By mimicking its recipient firms, the originating firm reduces the challenge and uncertainty of exploring unfamiliar knowledge domains. We examine the exploration activities of 87 telecommunications equipment manufacturers over a ten-year time period. We argue that those firms that operate in competitive and dynamic market environments promoting conservative risk-taking behavior will value such uncertainty reduction more highly and thus rely to a greater extent on their recipient firms for guidance on where to explore for new expertise. In contrast, firms in high-growth market environments are more likely to look beyond the activities of recipient firms when exploring new technological domains and rely less on mimicking their recipient firms.     

Professional guilds, tension and knowledge management

Scientific research is a crucial success factor for knowledge intensive firms and is often a joint effort of scientists and managers. However, scientists and managers belong to different “professional guilds,” subscribing to different belief systems and valuing different types of incentives. These differences give rise to tension between scientists and managers. We integrate a large body of literature from knowledge management to develop a new theoretical model predicting that this organizational tension is affected by environmental factors such as the degree of industry munificence, firm-specific factors like knowledge-management policies, and the individual roles of boundary spanners within the firm. Further, we argue that this tension can lead to positive or negative outcomes.     

Collaborative working in a large pharmaceutical company: Developing better practices through a structurational schema

This paper presents the ongoing case study of a large pharmaceutical organisation currently undertaking a number of changes to their work practices. These collaborative changes are being facilitated by groupware systems. In many instances this has led to the rejection of or resistance to the more complex tools. The paper outlines research, based on a perspective informed by structuration theory, that provides the organisation with an approach to supporting staff in this new ‘collaborative environment’. An example, drawn from the case study, shows how such support might be developed and presents a set of recommendations for supporting a particular group, based on this research schema.     

A study on customer,supplier, and competitor knowledge using the knowledge chain model

In the new economy, firms are willing to pay abundant premiums for the significant entrepreneurial capacities of management and staff in order to develop, build, protect, transfer and integrate knowledge. Although companies and scholars have indeed recognized the value of knowledge management, they have not generally included customer, supplier, and competitor knowledge, preferring to emphasize the process of knowledge acquisition and sharing that takes place within organizations. Thus, this study proposes a conceptual framework, and uses interpretative case studies, to explore how an enterprise obtains the three types of external knowledge. Moreover, through the following five primary activities – acquisition, selection, generation, internalization, and externalization – this study will illustrate how enterprises apply the internal knowledge chain to transform their customer, supplier, and competitor knowledge to enhance enterprise competitiveness.     

The impact of knowledge stickiness on knowledge transfer implementation,internalization, and satisfaction for multinational corporations

Improving the effectiveness of knowledge transfer from a parent firm to its subsidiary is one of the most critical issues confronting management at multinational companies (MNC). Since knowledge tends to be sticky and difficult to transfer, the success of knowledge transfer is contingent not only upon various kinds of contextual variables, but also upon the process of knowledge transfer implementation and internalization. Previous studies did not consider the process of implementation and internalization variables, and failed to provide a more comprehensive research framework for MNC knowledge transfer. This study attempts to assess the impact of knowledge stickiness on knowledge transfer implementation and internalization, as well as the performance of headquarter–subsidiary knowledge transfer. Results of this study suggest that an increase in knowledge stickiness may have a positive and significant influence on knowledge implementation, internalization, and knowledge transfer satisfaction. However, increases in knowledge stickiness beyond a certain point can also deter the success of transferring knowledge. Results also suggest a significant relationship between knowledge transfer implementation and internalization, innovation and satisfaction, and between knowledge innovation and knowledge transfer satisfaction.     

Entry, exit and knowledge: evidence from a cluster in the info-communications industry

The process by which knowledge is created, accumulated and eventually destroyed appears crucial to many industrial dynamics patterns, since it shapes the profile of evolution of industries by favouring the entry of new companies, the co-existence of incumbents and new entrants and, eventually, their selective or joint exit over time. Though problematic, and all too often neglected, the connection between two nodes of interest, Industrial Dynamics on the one hand, and Knowledge Dynamics on the other hand, thus appears as a promising field of research. On the basis of a case study in the info-communications industry, we start by emphasizing that this field of research has direct importance at the empirical level. Knowledge dynamics can create specific models of evolution among firms at the local level, such as non-shakeout patterns within the cluster, which significantly differ from more global patterns of evolution in the info-communications industry, now generally oriented towards trends of decline and bust. We further argue in favour of the development of Knowledge-Based Industrial Dynamics, an approach that lies at the interface of industry and knowledge dynamics, and which can explain how a cluster may decrease the barriers to knowledge of clustered companies and, further, create a specific knowledge dynamics that is able to shape the industrial dynamics. Finally, we document how this process of knowledge dynamics was collectively implemented in our case study on the info-communications cluster and decompose the mechanisms that led to a local non-shakeout pattern of industrial dynamics. We conclude with some remarks on the policy implications.     

The French defence industry in the knowledge management era: A historical overview and evidence from empirical data

In the defence industry the recent development of a ‘market for technology’, the creation of new European high-technology companies as well as transformations in government agencies have driven firms to reposition their technological and organizational skills. Our objective is to show that the transformations that have occurred in the past 10 years have not only redefined skills and the organization of production, but also have given a more strategic place to knowledge management (KM) practices. We provide a contextual and historical overview based on qualitative interviews, in order to better understand the relation between KM and innovative behaviour in this industry. We build an original industrial and technological database comprising various samples that provides quantitative information concerning KM and innovative practices. The results of the statistical analysis reveal the specificity of firms in this industry. Taking account of the size of these firms and their technological intensity, we show that the behaviour of defence industry firms in terms of KM practices, differs from that of other firms. This is evident from their technological performance, and innovation and patenting intensity. This structural tendency is explained as an innovative behaviour in the French national innovation system rather than merely a ‘trend’.     

Knowledge maps: A systematic literature review and directions for future research

ContextNowadays the concept of knowledge mapping has attracted increased attention from scientists in a variety of academic disciplines and professional practice areas. Among the most important attributes of a knowledge map is its ability to increase communication and share common practices across an entire organisation. However, despite being a promising area for research, the knowledge maps community lacks a widespread understanding of the current state of the art.ObjectiveThe objective of this article is to explore the world of knowledge mapping by reviewing and analysing the current state of research and providing an overview of knowledge mapping’s concepts, benefits, techniques, classifications and methodologies, which are precisely reviewed, and their features are highlighted. In addition, we offer directions for future research.MethodBased on the systematic literature review method this study collects, synthesises, and analyses numerous articles on a variety of topics closely related to a knowledge map published from January 2000 to December 2013 on six electronic databases by following a pre-defined review protocol. The articles have been retrieved through a combination of automatic and manual search, hence extensive quantitative and qualitative results of the research are provided.ResultsFrom the review study, we identified 132 articles addressing knowledge maps that have been reviewed in order to extract relevant information on a set of research questions. We found a generally increasing level of activity during this 5-year period. We noted that while existing research covers a large number of studies on some disciplines, such as systems and tools development, it contains very few studies on other disciplines, such as knowledge maps adoption. To aid this situation, we offer directions for future research.ConclusionsThe results demonstrated that a knowledge map is an imperative strategy for increasing organisations’ effectiveness. In addition, there is a need for more knowledge maps research.     

Sources of knowledge acquisition and patterns of knowledge-sharing behaviors—An empirical study of Taiwanese high-tech firms

The new knowledge acquisition and sharing stage represents the start of the organization's overall knowledge creation process. It is especially important for contributing to the critical foundation of organizational knowledge creation. This study explores the relationship between employees’ knowledge acquisition sources and the patterns of knowledge-sharing behaviors. We use structural equation modeling to test a sample of R&D professionals from high-tech companies in Taiwan. Data analysis suggests that most employees prefer to acquire knowledge from, and share knowledge with, their team members. This implies that greater familiarity between team members and strengthened cooperative relationships foster productivity. Furthermore, employees should be encouraged to participate in professional communities in order to acquire new knowledge. Knowledge acquired via these channels will facilitate the sharing of R&D knowledge within the organization.     

Exploring the knowledge filter: How entrepreneurship and university–industry relationships drive economic growth

Knowledge is recognized as a crucial element of economic growth in addition to physical capital and labor. Knowledge can be transformed into products and processes and is, in this way, exploited commercially. The ability to produce, identify, and exploit knowledge depends on the existing knowledge stock and the absorptive capacity of actors such as employees at firms and researchers at universities and research institutions. The existing knowledge stock might not be commercialized to its full extent; therefore, knowledge flows must occur and transmission channels are needed. The paper tests the hypotheses that entrepreneurship and university–industry relations are vehicles for knowledge flows and, thus, spur economic growth.     

The roles of gamification,knowledge creation,and entrepreneurial orientation towards firm performance

In a highly competitive industry, it has been a best practice that dynamic capabilities guide technology firms to cope with challenging situations. Meanwhile, knowledge creation enables the firm to condition the success and continuity of innovations, entrepreneurial orientation to support companies in winning the competition, and gamification to engage employees in a collaborative way towards better firm performance. This study examines how technology companies can improve their performance using gamification, knowledge creation, and entrepreneurial orientation. To test the proposed model, we collected data using a questionnaire survey of 124 technology companies in Indonesia. The theoretical model used structural equation modeling (SEM) with SmartPLS 3. The results show that all constructs have a direct and positive relationship, except for the direct relationship between gamification and firm performance. Thus, entrepreneurial orientation and knowledge creation are essential components of technology companies that mediate the effect of gamification on firm performance. This study provides a theoretical and empirical basis for the antecedents of technological firm performance.     

Yes, now we can: Technological change and the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities

The paper investigates how technological change in an industry influence which individuals will identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. We propose that the introduction of new development tools will change knowledge-barriers to entry because they enable the abstraction of specialized knowledge that was previously needed for development. Empirically we test the argument using data from the web design industry in a Nordic country during the period 1992–2003. We compare the education and experience of founders before and after the introduction of web administration tools in 1998 and find a significant difference, which supports the main thesis of our argument.     

追赶企业的本地搜索、能力重构与创新绩效：追赶阶段的调节作用

本地搜索通过相邻知识的搜索和挖掘,保证了组织常规的延续性和连贯性,是提升企业创新绩效的重要手段。本文把追赶进程划分为追赶早期和追赶晚期,利用结构方程模型和多元回归模型,验证了能力重构在本地搜索与创新绩效间的中介作用及追赶阶段的调节作用。结果表明：1）本地搜索显著提升了企业创新绩效;2）能力重构在本地搜索与企业创新绩效的关系间发挥完全中介作用;3）追赶阶段显著调节了能力重构对创新绩效的影响。具体而言,追赶早期,能力进化对创新绩效有积极影响,能力替代对创新绩效有消极影响;追赶晚期,能力进化对创新绩效有消极影响,能力替代对创新绩效有积极影响。本研究丰富了本地搜索对企业创新的作用机制的研究,验证了能力重构在企业创新中的重要作用,为追赶企业的本地知识搜索和创新实践提供理论指导。