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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2011‒12‒05
six papers chosen by Laura Stefanescu European Research Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration |
| By: | Gunther Maier; Michaela Trippl |
| Abstract: | This paper seeks to enhance our understanding about the opportunities and limits of new path creation in traditional regional innovation systems. Due to their inherited historical legacies, such systems are usually thought of being ill-equipped to give rise to high-tech or knowledge intensive activities. Departing from recent insights on research concerned with the transformation of innovation systems and evolutionary economic geography we identify in a conceptual way enabling and constraining factors for the rise of new development paths in traditional regions. Empirically, we focus on the case of the “Software Park Hagenberg†(SPH) located in the old industrial region of Upper Austria. We examine key events triggering the emergence and subsequent evolution of the SPH and explore the role of the RIS in shaping the development trajectory of the SPH. Moreover, applying social network analysis tools, we investigate the pattern of networking between firms, research organisations and educational bodies within the SPH and we provide some evidence on the diffusion of knowledge and innovation generated though these interactions throughout the regional economy. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p1830&r=knm |
| By: | Manuel Lopez-Estornell; Ignacio Fernández de Lucio |
| Abstract: | ABSTRACT The first aim of the paper is to analyze the presence of knowledge in innovative firms located in industrial districts (ID) in order to contrast it with this kind of firm located in non industrial districts areas (NID). This approach assumes the presence of an industrial district effect, i.e., the presumption of a better performance of knowledge and economic results in the first group of firms. Second, we have attempted to identify the existence of interdistrict effect, i.e., the emergence of gaps in knowledge of innovative firms located in ID with different technological intensity. For both purposes we have chosen the Valencian ID in Spain. Besides, with the introduction of innovative firms as units of analysis we have assumed that: a) They reflect a superior use of knowledge resources as inputs for business innovation generation and b) Their greatest use of such resources facilitate the absorption of knowledge spillovers that flow through the district. The empirical analysis has used an unprecedented database containing information of 5,553 innovative companies we have found in the region. The mean analysis applied has allowed us to identify the variables with statistically significant differences, as a preliminary step to isolate the groups of firms with more pronounced central values. The results have shown the presence of differences characterizing differently innovative companies of ID and NID as well as the groups of innovative firms belonging to districts of different technological level. In the first case the superiority of innovative companies has not arisen and, consequently, we cannot confirm the existence of a district effect. Nevertheless, we have detected some evidence of inter-industrial effect in the gradation performance of innovation firms of shoes, textiles and tales. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p361&r=knm |
| By: | Manuel Lopez-Estornell |
| Abstract: | ABSTRACT The dissemination of knowledge in industrial districts (ID) and clusters has often been linked to the existence of a specific tacit knowledge. Thus, the companies belonging to ID specialization sector might sustain a distinctive competitive advantage against isolated firms. However, the observation of technological changes in recent decades and the presence of ID whose technological intensity has dramatically increased in the same period suggest the existence and need for codified knowledge in these agglomerations. As result of tacit knowledge decline, the economic performance of ID could move backwards, given the greater ease to imitate and reproduce their contextual knowledge by competitor firms located in not district areas. The paper discusses the above assumptions, suggesting the existence of combinations/hybridizations of both types of knowledge in ID, which we have named locational-translational knowledge. This third type of knowledge could explain the maintenance of ID contextual advantages even in presence of higher doses of codified knowledge. This would require the presence of agents acting as interfaces able to absorb new pieces of codified knowledge in order to combine them with local knowledge for adjusting the specific needs of ID. However, we argue the existence of several constraints, such as the size of 'creative market district’, in ID which may require the opening of ID to knowledge imported from academic institutions and other formal research organizations, in contrast with autarky or isolation suggested by tacit knowledge. Finally, an analysis of the ID evolution enables us to appreciate that the process of absorption, combination and dissemination of external knowledge may have existed throughout the life cycle of ID but supported, at each stage, for different institutional agents: the 'impannatore', the 'cappofiliera' firm and, lastly, for formal knowledge-oriented institutions such as the above referred. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p368&r=knm |
| By: | Stefan Groot |
| Abstract: | This paper considers diversity of the knowledge of expats as a complementary dimension of human capital that may generate spillovers. Such, often intangible, knowledge about foreign markets, management skills, and other complementary information may enhance the productivity of these expats, or the people who interact with them. However, due to a lack of knowledge about local culture and language, productivity may also decline. We explore an extensive set of microdata from Statistics Netherlands, and use an augmented Mincer approach to simultaneously identify the private and social returns to the presence of foreign knowledge workers. Private returns are found to be negative and statistically significant, while no evidence for – either negative or positive – social returns is found. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p1338&r=knm |
| By: | Alexander Pelyasov; Nataliya Galtseva; Igor Batsaev; Igor Golubenko |
| Abstract: | Economic role of the knowledge transfer is studied on the example of the Russian North-East and its two basic branches that is exploration and mining which form the core of the regional economy (regional mining system). Russian North-East can be considered as isolated industrial district with the basic gold mining activity. The scale of this activity has been determined regional socio-economic development for the last 80 years. The major information for this study has been taken from GIS on the spatial structure of exploration and mining branches in the Russian North-East on the district level for the last 80 years. On the basis of revealed regularities and specifics in the interregional knowledge transfer we have formed general understanding of this process. We have analyzed major channels of knowledge transfer from exploration as the branch generating new knowledge on the mineral resources to mining in which this knowledge is utilized. We have determined major systems of knowledge transfer from one branch to the other under different periods of regional economic history. We have examined how territorial structures of exploration and mining industries had been changed inside the regional system for the last 80 years. Main characteristics of knowledge transfer inside the regional mining system influence its productivity (volume of extraction, speed of development of the new deposits, etc.). Effective communication between exploration and mining industry, knowledge transfer from the geologists to the miners is critically important for the sustainable work of the regional mining system. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p52&r=knm |
| By: | Augusto Cusinato; Fabiano Compagnucci |
| Abstract: | The spatial implications of fordist and district-based patterns of development have had a profound effect on the debate about the role of the city. While the city is reputed to be the crucial provider of basic public goods within the fordist model, its role seems more nuanced, if not disputable, when the district model prevails. This disregard for the city is probably due (a) to the fact that the revival of the debate on marshallian districts has placed strong emphasis on the agglomeration economies internal to the districts themselves, while relatively omitting the urban ones, when not emphasising the burden of urban diseconomies; (b) to the countryside roots of most district pioneers. The quarrel was further fuelled with the advent of ICTs, the fragmentation of the productive processes and the possibility of displacing phases at a global level. The paper argues that this is only the early part of the history. The advent of ICTs has had not only functional although important consequences on the internal organisation of firms and industry and on economic geography as a whole; it has also, however, made innovation and knowledge ? rather than cost-saving policies ? the crucial drivers of the competitiveness of firms and local economic systems. The notion of knowledge has profoundly changed too, and the main change consists in the shift that is occurring from Learning I to Learning II, that is from the “production and accumulation†of knowledge according to pre-established codes, to its “generation and articulation†thanks to an endless reshaping of cognitive codes. On this prospect, while firms, places and regions are increasingly conceptualised as Learning II milieus, cities are proving to be a crucial and irreplaceable milieu for knowledge generation. As a consequence, it is becoming necessary to reassess the relationships between industry and the city. Within this new situation, industrial districts may suffer a severe condition of marginality from the central driver of knowledge generation, owing to their lack of internal competences in dialoguing with the city, and/or the lack of suitable mediators. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p237&r=knm |