|
on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
|
Issue of 2014‒08‒09
ten papers chosen by Laura Ştefănescu Centrul European de Studii Manageriale în Administrarea Afacerilor |
| By: | Stephen Roper (Warwick University Business School); James H. Love (Aston University Business School); Ying Zhou (Aston University Business School) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we develop a framework to identify those elements of firms’ knowledge context which are important for innovation, and the mechanisms through which that knowledge impacts on firms’ innovation performance. We make four main contributions to the existing literature. First, our characterisation of knowledge context provides the basis for a more specific identification of which elements of firms’ knowledge environment are important for innovation, discriminating between spatial, industrial and network influences. Second, we reflect the role of innovation ambition in shaping firms’ knowledge search strategies. Third, we differentiate between firms’ interactive and non-interactive knowledge search activities and recognise that these may be complemented by unanticipated and serendipitous knowledge spillovers. Finally, we introduce the notion of encoding capacity to reflect firms’ internal ability to assimilate and apply external knowledge. Our framework provides an integrating mechanism for existing empirical studies, suggests a number of new research directions related to the determinants of innovation performance and the heterogeneity of innovation outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge, innovation, spatial, industry, learning |
| Date: | 2014–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:enr:rpaper:0020&r=knm |
| By: | Leppälä, Samuli (Cardiff Business School) |
| Abstract: | There is substantial empirical evidence that innovation is geographically concentrated. Unlike what is generally assumed, however, it is not clear that localised knowledge spillovers provide a theoretically valid explanation for this. Studying spillovers of cost-reducing technology between Cournot oligopolists we show that 1) localised knowledge spillovers of any level do encourage agglomeration, but 2) whether this leads to higher levels of effective R&D depends on the type and level of knowledge spillovers, the number of firms, and the industry's R&D efficiency. |
| Keywords: | knowledge spillovers; agglomeration economies; innovation; location |
| JEL: | O33 R32 L13 |
| Date: | 2014–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2014/10&r=knm |
| By: | Stephen Roper (Warwick University Business School); Helen Xia (Loughborough University) |
| Abstract: | Innovation has a recognised effect on survival. Undertaking more risky innovation, for example, may increase the risk of business failure, while more incremental innovation may reduce failure risk. Here, we investigate how firms’ innovation strategy choices – which may reduce the riskiness or costs of innovation and/or increase the innovation rewards – moderate the innovation-survival relationship. Our analysis is based on UK Community Innovation Survey data matched with survival data from firms’ published accounts. We are able to match nearly 80 per cent of UK CIS respondents. Contrary to expectations we find that innovation partnering and intellectual property protection have little or no moderating effect on the innovation-survival relationship. However, receiving public support for innovation has significant positive moderating effects. This suggests the notion of “survival additionality”, i.e. firms receiving public support derive more persistent benefits from innovation than firms which did not receive public support. Specifically, firms which receive public support for innovation are 2.7 per cent more likely to survive for eight years than firms which innovate but without public support. This result is strongest for product and service rather than process change, with implications for innovation policy design and evaluation. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, survival, strategy, public support, additionality, UK |
| JEL: | O32 L1 O38 Q34 L26 |
| Date: | 2014–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:enr:rpaper:0017&r=knm |
| By: | Jeroen de Jong |
| Abstract: | Until seven years ago, user innovation studies focused on specific cases or industries, leaving room for criticism that the phenomenon is marginal. This chapter summarizes and discusses the empirical work concerned with the scope of user innovation in broader samples. A first finding is that user innovation is widespread. The share of firms developing and/or modifying processes for in-house use is generally about 15 to 20 percent, while amongst consumers four to six percent innovated to satisfy personal needs in the past three years. This corresponds with millions of innovating businesses and consumers across the globe. For firms, user innovation indicators measure process-related innovation activities which remain partly invisible in official surveys, while user innovation by individual consumers is not at all present in the official statistics. A second finding is that user innovation is more open than traditional, producer-oriented innovation. Especially innovating consumers do not patent their knowledge, and 10 to 30 percent of them even shares their knowledge freely with other users and/or adopting businesses. Finally, it appears that users’ innovations can be useful to other economic actors. Diffusion mechanisms include free revealing to other users, new venture creation, and adoption by commercial producers. Overall, the empirical studies suggest that user innovation indicators should be part of the official innovation metrics. |
| Date: | 2014–05–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eim:papers:h201403&r=knm |
| By: | Chatterjee, Sidharta |
| Abstract: | Practice of knowledge management is often characterized by obstacles to creation, distribution, and transfer of knowledge from specific groups of settings. Obstacles or constraints to attempts to constitute knowledge as an organizational resource have been previously dealt within the context of organizational learning perspectives; however, there still remain barriers toward making learning available and all-pervasive throughout organizations. This is often as a result of two important factors; i) bureaucratic and hierarchical forms of organization, and ii) owing to the situated and tacit character of knowledge. This paper is a result of theoretical exploration aimed toward addressing these core issues, and proposes solutions to manage constraints and remove obstacles to knowledge management, as well as means to codify the tacit character of knowledge. The research offers a view that although it is reasonable to value knowledge in financial or economic terms, it is also important to consider the problems which make it difficult to extract and transfer knowledge within specific organizational settings. Addressing the issue of rising competitive pressure for innovation, this paper proposes several solutions to enable lateral flows of knowledge-sharing by overcoming the factors that affect acquisition of, and creation and distribution of knowledge across fluid social boundaries. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge management, tacit knowledge, organizational learning , constraints to KM |
| JEL: | M10 |
| Date: | 2014–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:57789&r=knm |
| By: | Lopez-Rodriguez, Jesus; Martinez, Diego |
| Abstract: | Although non-R&D innovation activities account for a significant portion of innovation efforts carried out across very heterogeneous economies in Europe, how to incorporate them in to economic models is not always straightforward. For instance, the traditional macro approach to estimating the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) does not handle them well. To counter these problems, this paper proposes applying an augmented macro-theoretical model to estimate the determinants of TFP by jointly considering the effects of R&D and the impact of non-R&D innovation activities on the productivity levels of firms. Estimations from a model of a sample of EU-26 countries covering the period 2004-2008 show that the distinction between R&D and non-R&D effects is significant for a number of different issues. First, the results show a sizeable impact on TFP growth, as the impact of R&D is twice that of non-R&D. Second, absorptive capacity is only linked to R&D endowments. And third, the two types of endowments cannot strictly been seen as complementary, at least for the case of countries with high R&D intensities or high non-R&D intensities. |
| Keywords: | TFP; R&D; non-R&D expenditures; EU countries |
| JEL: | O0 O3 O4 |
| Date: | 2014–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2014/5&r=knm |
| By: | Amavilah, Voxi Heinrich |
| Abstract: | Existing literature demonstrates clearly that knowledge is the sum of common knowledge and uncommon knowledge. Common knowledge is mostly inherited and it may or may not have scientific bases. Uncommon knowledge is mainly a product of the motions of science and technology. Scientific and technological motions depend on human capital, so that world knowledge is human capital by implication. From here analysis is not so unusual as the concept of human capital is not new. Through out history people have been interested in valuing human life. What prevented rapid progress in the beginning was inhibitions to likening humans to machines. As soon as economists overcame their inhibitions, human capital theory developed quickly along the familiar logistic curve, picking up speed after Mincer devised a practical formula for it. However, the Mincerian equation formalized a misconception in three ways. First, it based human capital only on labor, thereby overstating the production role and disregarding the importance of human capital in innovation and knowledge creation. Second, it measured human capital as an area, ignoring common language and understanding that as knowledge human capital is at least 3D “solid”, with depth, width, and the time over and in which it accumulates. Finally, it neglected key interactions between the quantity and quality indicators of human capital. These misconceptions are what this paper tries to shed light upon by proposing a commonsensical measure of human capital as a volume. Analysis finds that disregarding interactions our commonsensical measure of human capital is larger than conventional Mincerian measures of human capital. Taking interactions into account, it is possible for our measure to be larger, smaller, or equal to conventional measures. |
| Keywords: | 3D human capital, Mincerian human capital, scientific knowledge, technological knowledge, common knowledge, wide knowledge, deep knowledge, solid knowledge, intimate knowledge, acquired knowledge, inherited knowledge |
| JEL: | D83 I29 J24 O15 Z00 |
| Date: | 2014–07–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:57670&r=knm |
| By: | Edwin Goñi; William F. Maloney |
| Abstract: | Using a global panel on research and development (R&D) expenditures, this paper documents that on average poor countries do far less R&D than rich as a share of GDP. This is arguably counter intuitive since the gains from doing the R&D required for technological catch up are thought to be very high and Griffith et al. (2oo4) have documented that in the OECD returns increase dramatically with distance from the frontier. Exploiting recent advances in instrumental variables in a varying coefficient context we find than the rates of return follow an inverted U: they rise with distance to the frontier and then fall thereafter, potentially turning negative for the poorest countries. The findings are consistent with the importance of factors complementary to R&D, such as education, the quality of scientific infrastructure and the overall functioning of the national innovation system, and the quality of the private sector, which become increasingly weak with distance from the frontier and the absence of which can offset the catch up effect. China’s and India’s explosive growth in R&D investment trajectories in spite of expected low returns may be justified by their importing the complementary factors in the form of multinational corporations who do most of the patentable research. |
| Keywords: | R&D, Technology Adoption, Development, Complementarities, Instrumental Variable Varying Coefficient Models. |
| JEL: | O1 O32 O33 O4 |
| Date: | 2014–06–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:011947&r=knm |
| By: | Jan de Kok; Sophie Doove; Peter Oeij; Karolus Kraan |
| Abstract: | Workplace innovation can be defined as the implementation of new and combined interventions in work organisation, HRM and supportive technologies, and strategies to improve performance of organisations and quality of jobs. Previous research confirms the presence of a positive relationship between workplace innovation and firm performance. Within this study we are interested in the scale effects in workplace innovation. Does firm size moderate the relationship between workplace innovation and organisational performance? |
| Date: | 2014–04–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eim:papers:h201402&r=knm |
| By: | Kyriakos Drivas (Agricultural University of Athens); Athanasios T. Balafoutis (Agricultural University of Athens); Stelios Rozakis (Agricultural University of Athens) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses detailed data on funding information and research output from Agricultural University of Athens to examine how each type of funding source is related to the quantity and quality of academic research output. Of special interest are the corporate sponsors, the Greek government and European Union funding. We find that after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity from each research lab, all types of research sponsors are similarly related to both the count of publications and citations. Further, we find that research labs that have filed for at least one patent application, produce on average more publications and citations and receive more funding both from corporate and public sponsors. |
| Keywords: | research sponsor, corporate funding, government sponsor, European Union funding, publications, patents. |
| JEL: | O32 O33 O34 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aua:wpaper:2014-5&r=knm |