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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2007‒05‒26
five papers chosen by Emanuele Canegrati Catholic University of the Sacred Heart |
| By: | Isabel Pizarro-Moreno (Department of Business Administration, Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Juan C. Real (Department of Business Administration, Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Elena Sousa-Ginel (Department of Business Administration, Universidad Pablo de Olavide) |
| Abstract: | Increasing globalisation and dynamism in the economy has made it necessary for established companies to regenerate themselves and renew their ability to compete. This is the goal of Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) activities, which involve extending the firm’s domain of competence and corresponding opportunity set, through internally generated new resource combinations. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the way the process of CE is developed within the organizations. In order to achieve this, a model relating key components of the CE process (opportunity, initiative and capability) to five phases of knowledge creation taken from Nonaka & Takeuchi is proponed. |
| Keywords: | organizational knowledge creation; corporate entrepreneurship; knowledge-base view; innovation; development of capabilities |
| Date: | 2007–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pab:wpbsad:07.02&r=knm |
| By: | A. WILLEM; H. SCARBROUGH; M. BUELENS |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the influence of two competing views of social identity on knowledge integration within organizations. One view sees social identity primarily as a coherent characteristic of organisations, which can leverage knowledge integration by developing loyalty, trust, shared values and implicit norms (Kogut and Zander, 1996). The opposing view considers social identification as multiple and fragmented (Albert, Ashforth and Dutton, 2000; Alvesson, 2000). This fragmented view emphasises the problematic nature of social identity for knowledge integration. The aim of this paper is to examine these competing accounts and to develop insight under what conditions coherent respectively multiple social identities are advantageous for knowledge integration by the comparative analysis of two polar case studies. Our case studies reveal the different effects of a coherent versus multiple identity on knowledge integration and the need for a coherent company-wide social identity to leverage knowledge integration between organizational units. |
| Keywords: | case studies, knowledge integration, multiple identities, organization theory, organization-wide identity, social identity |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rug:rugwps:07/464&r=knm |
| By: | Malchow-Møller, Nikolaj; Markusen, James R.; Schjerning, Bertel |
| Abstract: | Foreign-owned firms are often hypothesized to generate productivity “spillovers” to the host country, but both theoretical micro-foundations and empirical evidence for this are limited. We develop a heterogeneous-firm model in which ex-ante identical workers learn from their employers in proportion to the firm’s productivity. Foreign-owned firms have, on average, higher productivity in equilibrium due to entry costs, which means that low-productivity foreign firms cannot enter. Foreign firms have higher wage growth and, with some exceptions, pay higher average wages, but not when compared to similarly large domestic firms. The empirical implications of the model are tested on matched employer-employee data from Denmark. Consistent with the theory, we find considerable evidence of higher wages and wage growth in large and/or foreign-owned firms. These effects survive controlling for individual characteristics, but, as expected, are reduced significantly when controlling for unobservable firm heterogeneity. Furthermore, acquired skills in foreign-owned and large firms appear to be transferable to both subsequent wage work and self-employment. |
| Keywords: | heterogeneous firms; knowledge transfer; multinationals; productivity; spillovers |
| JEL: | F16 F2 F23 |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6292&r=knm |
| By: | João Caraça; João Lobo Ferreira; Sandro Mendonça |
| Abstract: | The implementation of innovation has a central role in the dynamic knowledge economy of the twenty-first century. The ability to assemble new expertise and commercialise new business propositions constitutes one of the central characteristics in today’s globalising, learning-intensive, fast changing economic life. This paper sets out to articulate a stylised understanding of the modern innovation process on the basis of the currently available understanding in the innovation studies tradition. The conceptual model seeks to capture the essential features of organisations engaged in developing dynamic factors of competitiveness. |
| Keywords: | innovation; innovation process; conceptual model |
| JEL: | L20 O33 O34 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp122007&r=knm |
| By: | F. GAILLY; W. LAURIER; G. POELS |
| Abstract: | Ontologies are a popular research direction in different domains as is also the case in information systems research. In the beginning of this millennium Geerts and McCarthy (2002) proposed an ontology for the business context which was an extension of the basic REA-model which had already proven its use as a semantic accounting information model. In the recent papers of Geerts and McCarthy the focus is primarily on defining and theoretically justifying the content of this newly proposed enterprise ontology. In this paper we elaborate on more practical issues related to the REA-ontology. A lot of confusion exists about what ontologies are and for what purpose they can be used. In this paper we investigate how we could classify the REA-ontology and the REA-ontology applications. This analysis clarifies the application potential of the REA-ontology but also emphasizes that a generally accepted, explicit and formal specification is needed in order to improve the usability. In the case of the REA-ontology this means that the ontology should be more unambiguously to interpret by business experts and the applicability for ontology-driven system development and ontology driven systems should be improved. This paper proposes a new REA-ontology specification that uses an UML profile for graphically representing ontologies (OMG 2006). This specification of the ontology in a single graphical representation formalism is more complete than previously available representations, without compromising its ability to be understood by business professionals. At the same time it can easily be transformed into a more formal representation which can be understood by machines. Having a machine readable representation of the REA-ontology is a necessary prerequisite for the successful application of the REA-ontology in business modeling, software engineering, knowledge representation and interoperability creation. |
| Keywords: | REA-ontology, REA-ontology applications, OWL, UML, business modeling |
| Date: | 2007–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rug:rugwps:07/460&r=knm |