Intellectual capital model for family firms

The intellectual capital-based view of the firm along with the literature about family firms serve as the basis for the present paper, which seeks to elaborate an intellectual capital model that can be applied to family firms. More precisely, our study identifies the main intangibles usually owned by family firms classifying those intangibles into human capital, structural capital and relational capital. In addition, the paper provides empirical evidence and gives examples of these intangibles through the analysis of external data from international family firms. The research question that we are trying to answer is: Which intangibles are owned by family firms for the mere fact of being family firms? Knowing the nature of the intangibles inherent to family firms can help improve their management, making the most of the intellectual capital owned by these firms when it comes to exploit their knowledge strengths.     

An empirical analysis of the IC Navigator approach in practice – a case study of five manufacturing firms

The literature surrounding Intellectual Capital (IC) theory has grown substantially over the last 10 years with new models, frameworks and approaches introduced for how to manage IC. Yet, the practical implication of deploying IC methods in an organisation and its impact on a firm's business model innovation and decision-making process is relatively unexplored. This paper will review one tool, the IC Navigator approach and its effectiveness as a tool for resource deployment analysis and its impact on a firm's future value creation activities. The paper reports on research that involved five manufacturing firms who participated in an action learning workshop series and particularly the workshop dedicated to using the IC Navigator approach. The usefulness of this model as a tool to reconfiguring a firm's resources, as perceived by the five firms, is examined and findings are presented.     

Influence of intellectual capital upon knowledge creation in Spanish subsidiaries: an empirical study

Knowledge creation is one of the most important dynamic capabilities that firms can use to develop new assets, which can represent the basis for future innovations. Within a context of growing globalisation, the acquisition and creation of knowledge is one of the main objectives sought with international expansion. The consideration of intellectual capital within the knowledge creation process in subsidiaries offers an innovative way to undertake knowledge management practices in multinationals. Theoretical and empirical works can be found in the literature about intellectual capital. However, very few studies link intellectual capital to knowledge creation in multinationals. Seeking to fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model that includes the main intangibles belonging to structural and relational capital that can influence knowledge creation in Spanish subsidiaries of foreign multinational firms belonging to high-technology and knowledge-intensive sectors. Theoretical, empirical and managerial contributions result from this paper.     

Knowledge spillovers and intangible complementarities: Empirical case of European countries

Most studies on knowledge diffusion and productivity focus on either R&D, foreign direct investment or patent citation flows, and rarely consider complementary, intangible investments such as business process redesign, the co-invention of new products and business models, and investments in human capital. Although the effects of complementary investments and their spillovers are often mentioned in the literature, there is a lack of in-depth research. This study aims to fill this gap, taking into account knowledge diffusion and complementarities between different intangible assets, and evaluating their effects on productivity. We propose new measures of knowledge, which consider these complementarities, by using principal component analysis (PCA) to aggregate intangibles, and the Niche overlap index to ease interpretation. The analysis is conducted on an unbalanced country-industry panel dataset of 13 European countries, constructed from a combination of sources such as INTAN-Invest, WIOD, World Bank and EU-KLEMS. We develop total factor productivity proxies, and estimate the effects of knowledge diffusion on productivity by means of GMM panel regressions. Results confirm the importance of considering complementarities for detecting knowledge spillover effects, especially in the case of domestic spillovers, while foreign spillovers are shown to be less effective, supporting the view of knowledge spillovers as a prevalently localised phenomenon.     

Managing knowledge within networked innovation

The purpose of this paper is to research firms’ knowledge management practices within the context of networked innovation between multiple actors. The analysis is based on case research carried out with six companies. Based on earlier literature and the theoretical framework of the paper, two models of networked innovation can be distinguished according to knowledge management needs: networks focusing on the transaction of explicit knowledge and intellectual property, and networks focusing on the co-creation of new knowledge and business opportunities. The paper argues that a strategic approach to knowledge management is a key element of success within networked innovation, both in the theory and in the practices of firms. In that way, firms are able to manage knowledge within networked innovation when they understand their partners’ business models and strategic intents, for example their motivation to collaborate.     

以无形资产为核心的价值创造系统

在知识经济时代,无形资产成为企业价值创造的主要驱动因素。本文以价值网络理论为基础,认为企业是由利益相关者的专用性投资形成的网络。价值网络包含了个体、组织、组织间和社会不同的网络层次,知识等资源在网络不同层次的积累沉淀形成了无形资产。无形资产的价值驱动要素通过网络各层次间的相互嵌入和价值交换而相互联系,形成了以无形资产为核心的企业价值创造系统。     

Blockchain technology and gender equality: A systematic literature review

This study examines the literary corpus on the role and potential of blockchain technology in promoting gender equality through the lens of new technology-oriented corporate governance models. It investigates if and how corporate governance models can include blockchain technology to add value to gender equality and inclusion processes, in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5. A bibliometric analysis of a database—containing 127 articles, 4 United Nations reports, 3 European institutions’ reports, 1 International Labour Office report, 1 World Economic Forum report, and 4 industry reports useful to our analysis—was conducted from 1990 to 2021, to provide a map of the knowledge generated and circulated by the literature. This study offers insights into publication activities, essential topics, citation trends, and the status of collaborations between contributors to previous research and aggregated contributions to the area of blockchain technology studies. Furthermore, the study offers a retrospective analysis of the content published in the blockchain technology field. The findings indicate that field research has focussed primarily on blockchain’s economic and financial attributes but not on social potential. This study emphasises the implementation of blockchain technology to manage gender equality and inclusion processes by orienting corporate governance models towards social and sustainable values.     

Knowledge meaning and management in requirements engineering

It is traditionally assumed that requirements specification, as a product of requirements engineering, has a high impact on the ensuing software development stages. Therefore, the knowledge management used to construct the requirements specification should be performed in a structured manner to discover, analyze and understand the data–information–knowledge chain, both tacit and explicit, that the interested parties possess. In this article, the results of a literature review are presented, seeking to answer the following questions: (1) What is the meaning of knowledge in requirements engineering? (2) What approaches are proposed to manage knowledge in requirements engineering? (3) Can the efficiency and the efficacy of knowledge management models be evidenced in requirements engineering? Thirty-six works were chosen for analysis out of a total 83 found in our search. The analysis showed that (1) knowledge has a central significance at this stage, but the authors have yet to agree on the best methods to impart and apply that knowledge; (2) no general framework has emerged as a validated approach to manage knowledge for requirements engineering; and (3) the evaluation marks for model efficiency and efficacy are low, consisting mostly of personal interpretations.     

Knowledge management and intellectual capital: an empirical examination of current practice in Australia

This paper reports the findings from a survey conducted in Australia to explore current practices relating to knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC). A systematic approach in the form of the intellectual capital web guided the research. Findings revealed that KM was perceived to be more about developing knowledge culture than about managing organisational processes and structure. IC was perceived to be more about human capital than about customer capital and organisational capital. It can therefore be concluded that human capital holds the greatest importance for KM and IC. However, when facilitators for knowledge creation and knowledge sharing were rated, organisation structure was perceived to be more important than organisational culture and information technology. For KM practices, participants indicated that more attention was paid to training and developing employees and less to measurement and reward and incentive issues. The importance of aligning the management of IC and KM was perceived to be more important than the difficulty of doing so.     

Strategy development based on intangibles in SMEs – an integrated approach

The approach in this paper is based on the principles of action research and rapid prototyping. The paper shows the current status of a ‘bottom-up’ research process dedicated to continuously developing and improving management instruments that suit the requirements of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): pragmatic, easy-to-use and generating direct practical benefit. As a result, this paper links the concept of intangibles to the practical strategy development process in SMEs. The integration shown concerns several challenges: (1)?Integrate the internal and external perspective on intangibles, and, by that, link the concept of intellectual capital (IC) as a resource-based view with the concept of customer value as a market-based view. (2)?Integrate the theoretical concept of IC with a methodology for comprehensive strategy development. (3)?Integrate the formulation and implementation of business strategies taking into account the actual practice in SMEs.     

Is there something wrong with intellectual capital management models?

During the recent years the intellectual capital (IC) literature has produced tens of models to support the various IC management (ICM) activities, such as identification, measurement, valuation, acquisition and reporting IC. However, the practice of applying these models seems to be a fairly new issue in many organisations. The gap between research and practice (i.e. not many organisations seem to be applying ICM models) may result from several issues. This paper approaches the gap from two perspectives. First, the paper questions the applicability of ICM models. Second, although IC as a research theme is quite immature many management models that also include some of the aspects of IC have been developed within general management disciplines. Thus, this study examines whether traditional management models may also be suitable for ICM. The two questions are answered by using four single cases in which action research projects were carried out.     

基于创新的企业知识管理实务探析

企业知识管理实务涉及的问题很多，但可概括为两大类，即“管理什么”的问题和“怎样管理”的问题，本文从管理什么、怎样管理以及企业知识管理实务中需注意的问题三个方面对基于创新的企业知识管理实务进行了探讨。     

Ontology for knowledge management in software maintenance

The concept of ontologies has been widely reported in the literature, and has been described various ontological designs, but few works try to explain in practical terms how to design an ontology. On the other side, although it is widely accepted the importance of maintenance of software products, few ontological designs focus on applying techniques to manage knowledge to get it. This paper analyzes the ontologies proposed to address this need, in order to present information that can help to software development organizations in similar works. Besides, is described a methodological process to structure an ontology that can be applied to manage knowledge in software maintenance.     

三段式客户知识网络及其管理

客户知识网络是一种借助知识网络对客户知识进行管理的机制,使客户知识得到有效的配置、传递、转化和共享。在对CRM、CKM、客户知识网络的内容进行分析比较的基础上,提出了一个三段式客户知识网络的概念模型,并详细描述其三个子网的功能。通过分析知识网络运行机制来阐述客户知识网络的管理问题。     

组织学习与国际新创企业GVC嵌入路径——基于中国芯片行业的跨案例分析

    本文以中国芯片行业的三家国际新创企业为例,采用跨案例分析法,基于组织学习视角,对国际新创企业的组织学习要素和模式进行了剖析,并探讨了其全球价值链（Global Value Chain,GVC）嵌入路径。研究发现：国际新创企业的组织学习模式可分为信息探索式学习、技术探索式学习及开发式学习;国际新创企业的GVC嵌入路径包括价值链横向嵌入、价值链高端嵌入及价值链深度嵌入;国际新创企业应根据各自的组织学习要素选择相应的学习模式和嵌入路径。     

A systematic examination of knowledge loss in open source software projects

Context Open Source Software (OSS) development is a knowledge focused activity which relies heavily on contributors who can be volunteers or paid workers and are geographically distributed. While working on OSS projects contributors acquire project related individualistic knowledge and gain experience and skills, which often remains unshared with others and is usually lost once contributors leave a project. All software development organisations face the problem of knowledge loss as employees leave, but this situation is exasperated in OSS projects where most contributors are volunteers with largely unpredictable engagement durations. Contributor turnover is inevitable due to the transient nature of OSS project workforces causing knowledge loss, which threatens the overall sustainability of OSS projects and impacts negatively on software quality and contributor productivity.ObjectiveThe objective of this work is to deeply and systematically investigate the phenomenon of knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects as presented in the state-of-the-art literature and to synthesise the information presented on the topic. Furthermore, based on the learning arising from our investigation it is our intention to identify mechanisms to reduce the overall effects of knowledge loss in OSS projects.MethodologyWe use the snowballing methodology to identify the relevant literature on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects. This robust methodology for a literature review includes research question, search strategy, inclusion, exclusion, quality criteria, and data synthesis. The search strategy, and inclusion, exclusions and quality criteria are applied as a part of snowballing procedure.Snowballing is considered an efficient and reliable way to conduct a systematic literature review, providing a robust alternative to mechanically searching individual databases for given topics.ResultKnowledge sharing in OSS projects is abundant but there is no evidence of a formal strategy or practice to manage knowledge. Due to the dynamic and diverse nature of OSS projects, knowledge management is considered a challenging task and there is a need for a proactive mechanism to share knowledge in the OSS community for knowledge to be reused in the future by the OSS project contributors. From the collection of papers found using snowballing, we consolidated various themes on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects and identified 11 impacts due to knowledge loss in OSS projects, and 10 mitigations to manage with knowledge loss in OSS projects.ConclusionIn this paper, we propose future research directions to investigate integration of proactive knowledge retention practices with the existing OSS practices to reduce the current knowledge loss problem. We suggest that there is insufficient attention paid to KM in general in OSS, in particular there would appear to an absence of proactive measures to reduce the potential impact of knowledge loss. We also propose the need for a KM evaluation metric in OSS projects, similar to the ones that evaluate health of online communities, which should help to inform potential consumers of the OSS of the KM status on a project, something that is not existent today.     

Intellectual capital management in practice: assessment of implementation and outcomes

In recent decades, a huge variety of models for managing intellectual capital (IC) have been generated. However, understanding how IC management (ICM) models operate in practice and the issues that may be encountered when they are implemented remain a challenging issue. This is because there seems to be a significant gap between the enthusiastic development of ICM models in theory and the application of these models in companies. Therefore, more practically grounded research needs to be carried out. Reporting on action research projects and an interview study, this paper enriches the existing theoretical and framework-oriented IC literature by examining empirically the implementation of ICM projects and their outcomes in six Finnish companies. The findings of the paper include the challenges and success factors affecting the development of ICM projects, likewise the related outcomes and benefits. This provides useful insights for applying ICM to practice.     

企业智力资本对渐进式和根本性技术创新影响的路径探究

通过文献研究与企业调研访谈探究企业智力资本与技术创新之间的路径关系.研究表明:企业智力资本对渐进式和根本性技术创新均具有显著正效应,组织资本通过内部隐性知识转移对渐进式技术创新产生影响;内部隐性知识转移受组织资本和关系资本影响显著,且组织资本的作用更强,外部隐性知识转移受人力资本和关系资本影响显著;而内部隐性知识转移仅对渐进式技术创新具有显著正效应,外部隐性知识转移对根本性技术创新具有显著正效应,同时,外部隐性知识转移受内部隐性知识转移的影响显著.研究结论为企业实施有效的智力资本积累和技术创新战略提供借鉴.     

"It just goes against the grain." Public understandings of genetically modified (GM) food in the UK

This paper reports on one aspect of qualitative research on public understandings of food risks, focusing on lay understandings of genetically modified (GM) food in the UK context. A range of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical literature on food, risk, and the public understanding of science are reviewed. The fieldwork methods are outlined and empirical data from a range of lay groups are presented. Major themes include: varying "technical" knowledge of science, the relationship between knowledge and acceptance of genetic modification, the uncertainty of scientific knowledge, genetic modification as inappropriate scientific intervention in "nature", the acceptability of animal and human applications of genetic modification, the appropriate boundaries of scientific innovation, the necessity for GM foods, the uncertainty of risks in GM food, fatalism about avoiding risks, and trust in "experts" to manage potential risks in GM food. Key discussion points relating to a sociological understanding of public attitudes to GM food are raised and some policy implications are highlighted.     

Inter‐firm Migration of Tacit Knowledge: Law and Policy1

Abstract

Much knowledge is diffused by the exchange of property rights in intangibles. But tacit knowledge, not being subject to property rights, is instead diffused by migration of knowledgeable individuals between firms. The law impacts significantly on this diffusion mechanism, in particular those rules that determine the use individuals may make of their tacit knowledge after migration to a different firm. The general principle underlying the relevant law is that individuals are free to migrate with all their tacit knowledge. Nonetheless there are some narrow exceptions to this principle. That these exceptions remain narrow and carefully policed by the courts is important because imposing too many restraints on use of tacit knowledge post‐term would have a negative impact on real innovation.