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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2026–08–10
eight papers chosen by Laura Nicola-Gavrila, Centrul European de Studii Manageriale în Administrarea Afacerilor |
| By: | Aaron Chatterji; Daniel Rock; Eduard Talamas |
| Abstract: | Nonaka emphasized that innovation is the result of a continuous back-and-forth between tacit and explicit knowledge. Artificial intelligence introduces a fundamentally new object into this process -- tacit machine knowledge -- but Nonaka's ideas are more relevant than ever. The central role of the knowledge-creating company remains the same: to create the shared context in which different kinds of knowledge can feed off each other, become organizational knowledge, and set off further cycles of innovation. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.29227 |
| By: | Dohse, Dirk; Fehrenbacher, Sophia |
| Abstract: | African innovators typically suffer from severe resource constraints and need to develop strategies to cope with these constraints. This paper focusses on external knowledge sourcing and, in particular, on the role of cooperation as a means to compensate for missing resources. Findings suggest that domestic inter-firm cooperation is of outstanding importance for firm-level innovation in Nigeria, whereas cooperation with other partners (research institutions, foreign firms, consultants, or the government) has no sizable impact on the innovative performance of Nigerian firms. Moreover, we show that it is in particular young firms and firms suffering from financial constraints that benefit from cooperation, whereas foreign-owned firms benefit less. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the drivers of firm-level innovation in sub-Saharan Africa and have important implications for firm strategies and innovation policy. |
| Keywords: | Resource-constrained innovation, Knowledge sourcing, Inter-firm cooperation, Coactive learning, Africa |
| JEL: | D22 L25 O32 O36 O55 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkie:341859 |
| By: | Tiago Neves Sequeira (University of Coimbra, Faculty of Economics and CeBER) |
| Abstract: | Many frontier technologies generate both civilian and military applications, raising the question of how policies targeting one application influence innovation when knowledge is shared across sectors. This paper develops a Schumpeterian model of directed technical change in which civilian, military and dual-use technologies coexist as endogenous innovation ladders. The key innovation is to distinguish between a non-rival stock of knowledge generated by dual-use research and rival intermediate goods supplying civilian and military markets. Consequently, policy interventions in one sector redirect research incentives throughout the economy. The model admits a stable balanced-growth path with an interior allocation of research effort. A calibration based on U.S. patent stocks, aggregate R&D intensity and defence R&D expenditure illustrates the transition dynamics. Modest policy interventions substantially redirect innovation towards dual-use technologies, generating civilian knowledge spillovers while leaving long-run aggregate growth largely unchanged. |
| Keywords: | Directed technical change, dual-use innovation, endogenous growth, defense R&D, Schumpeterian growth, industrial policy |
| JEL: | O31 O32 O33 O40 H56 L16 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gmf:papers:2026-06 |
| By: | Ahmad, S Anas (Aligarh Muslim University); Anas, Mohammad; NOUMAN, ABDULLAH; Khan, Filza Zaki |
| Abstract: | India's Viksit Bharat 2047 framework (2026) and the IndiaAI Mission (2024) conflate compute sovereignty with knowledge sovereignty, embedding India within AI infrastructure whose epistemic consequences existing sustainability governance cannot register. Reading India's AI governance corpus as performative political narratives, the paper identifies the rhetorical operations through which compute capacity is narrated as knowledge sovereignty, and the silences through which epistemic costs are rendered external to the governance frame. To name what this discourse cannot see, the paper develops three interlocking concepts, each addressing a different question: what must be sustained, what happens to knowledge under enclosure, and why that enclosure persists ungoverned. Epistemic sustainability is the capacity of a knowledge system to remain durable, plural, and transmissible across time without structural dependence on extractive, proprietary, or epistemically homogenising infrastructure, extending Scheman's (2012) norm from the ethics of inquiry to the political economy of knowledge infrastructure. Epistemic enclosure names the mechanism: the print-to-digital-to-AI trajectory, narrated as democratising, renders postcolonial knowledge traditions legible only on terms they did not set, through architectures optimised for English-language statistical patterns. Indian languages account for approximately 0.5 per cent of Common Crawl data, a major source corpus for language-model training; traditions including Nyaya, Mimamsa, and Ayurveda are rendered legible through patent classification, formal logic, and metadata standards external to their conditions of intelligibility. Double concealment names the ideological operation sustaining this enclosure: material infrastructural costs are externalised from green AI accounting, while the foreclosure of non-Western epistemic plurality is rendered invisible behind narratives of democratised access. The paper proposes three governance instruments: epistemic impact assessments for public AI infrastructure investment; a policy framework distinguishing compute from knowledge sovereignty; and multilateral mechanisms protecting the epistemic commons of postcolonial traditions in global AI regimes. As India approaches its 2047 centenary, the governance question its AI discourse has not yet asked is whether the knowledge it produces will remain answerable to India's plural epistemic traditions, or merely processed through infrastructures designed elsewhere. |
| Date: | 2026–06–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:zgs6j_v1 |
| By: | Alan, Sule; Biswas, Kumar; Hauser, Christina Sarah; Sabarwal, Shwetlena |
| Abstract: | We evaluate a program that shifts the responsibility for establishing positive behavioral norms and reducing classroom disruptions from teachers to students. Covering over 7, 500 adolescents from 127 middle schools in Bangladesh, we find that the program significantly improves the classroom social climate, fostering greater cooperation, stronger behavioral norms, and more supportive peer networks. High-performing students emerge as the primary beneficiaries of this improved social climate, exhibiting significantly higher performance in math and verbal tests immediately after the program. A follow-up 1.5 years later reveals that while social climate improvements fade, math gains persist and extend to more students, though they remain concentrated among higher-ability peers. We identify a key mechanism behind this effect: the program strengthens academic support networks among high-ability students, enhancing knowledge spillovers within this group. Our findings suggest that a student-led, cohesive classroom environment creates conditions that help high-ability students excel and facilitate peer learning. |
| JEL: | C93 D63 I24 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20127 |
| By: | Vogt, Savio |
| Abstract: | The global doctoral economy is undergoing profound structural transformation driven by geopolitical competition, technological change, artificial intelligence, industrial policy and strategic innovation (OECD, 2025; UNESCO, 2021). Doctoral education increasingly functions at the intersection of national innovation, scientific capability, technological sovereignty and economic resilience rather than solely as a mechanism of academic credential formation. Contemporary reforms consequently oscillate between two competing institutional logics: publication-driven academic productivity and innovation-oriented industrial relevance. Whilst both respond to legitimate policy pressures, neither adequately addresses the long-term problem of preserving knowledge continuity, methodological integrity and institutional resilience under conditions of geopolitical uncertainty. This paper argues that doctoral policy has become constrained by a false binary between publication accumulation and innovation acceleration. Rather than interpreting doctoral education as either a publication economy or an innovation economy, it introduces the concept of Regulated Doctoral Economies, developed within the broader Regulated Accumulation Policy (RAP) framework. Doctoral systems are conceptualised as dynamic knowledge ecosystems whose resilience depends upon regulating expansion through institutional constraint rather than publication metrics or commercial outputs alone. Drawing upon comparative policy developments across China, India and Europe (2024–2026), the study integrates higher education governance, innovation systems, research integrity, comparative policy analysis, Fisherian variance and volatility assessment to examine the institutional conditions under which doctoral systems preserve equilibrium whilst avoiding both publication inflation and innovation concentration. The analysis further explores the risks of policy imitation across South Asia, arguing that resilient doctoral systems emerge not through maximising publications or products independently, but through maintaining a dynamic balance between scholarly originality, supervisory capacity, methodological rigour, industrial relevance and long-term knowledge continuity. The paper concludes by proposing the Regulated Doctoral Framework as a comparative policy architecture for strengthening doctoral resilience across increasingly geopolitically fragile frontiers, positioning doctoral education as a critical component of scientific sovereignty, institutional stability and long-term civilisational knowledge continuity. |
| Date: | 2026–07–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:edarxi:tukvx_v1 |
| By: | Koo, Wesley W.; Zhang, Miaomiao; Choudhury, Prithwiraj |
| Abstract: | Research Summary: Digital platforms provide arenas for global knowledge diffusion, but their underlying architecture often relies on synchronous exchange, inadvertently siloing users into distinct “time pockets” based on time zones. Using proprietary data from StackOverflow, we implement a regression discontinuity design to causally estimate that a 1-h increase (decrease) in the temporal distance between two regions leads to a 13.6% decrease (9.5% increase) in views and a 20.9% decrease (21.0% increase) in votes between those regions. These temporal frictions disproportionately penalize interactions in niche knowledge communities (e.g., sudo, slack-api) over those in popular ones (e.g., Python, JavaScript). Importantly, we show that a platform can mitigate temporal barriers by shuffling content representation. This paper contributes to our understanding of platform strategy, temporal distance, and global knowledge diffusion. Managerial Summary: While digital platforms deliver global connectivity, time zone differences create invisible barriers that stifle user interactions and knowledge exchange. Our research shows that temporal distance between regions on StackOverflow, a global knowledge community for computer programming, significantly reduces cross-region views and votes. These temporal silos disproportionately harm niche communities, where valuable content is less likely to be shared among users who are not online simultaneously. Popular communities, however, remain largely unaffected. For platform designers, relying solely on chronological feeds inadvertently fragments their global user base. To unlock cross-border exchange and support specialized communities, managers could adjust algorithms to “shuffle” content representation based on dynamic triggers rather than just the posting time. Doing so bridges temporal gaps and connects out-of-sync users. |
| Keywords: | digital platforms;global knowledge diffusion;temporal distance;user interactions |
| JEL: | J50 |
| Date: | 2026–06–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140136 |
| By: | Ina Ganguli; Jeffrey Lin; Vitaly Meursault; Nicholas Reynolds |
| Abstract: | Over nearly two centuries, U.S. inventions have become increasingly dissimilar: not just fewer head-to-head collisions between inventors, but growing distance between neighboring inventions. We document this secular decline in similarity using validated neural language models applied to the full text of claims in over 11 million U.S. patents (1836–2023), corroborated by a 98 percent decline in patent interference rates, a measure of independent simultaneous invention. Measuring this correctly requires validation, since different representations of the same patent text can yield opposite conclusions about whether inventions are converging or spreading out. Our validation framework, the first systematic comparison for patent text, selects among these locations in idea space. The model explains spreading out and connects it to several independently documented patterns — rising R&D investment per inventor, increasing patent values, weakening knowledge spillovers, and declining research productivity. The mechanism is spatial; as inventors spread out to capture new territory, inventions become more valuable but also more costly for others to absorb. In doing so, the model turns spillover intensity, innovation step size, and research productivity from fixed primitives into outcomes of inventor positioning. A calibrated decomposition attributes roughly 40 percent of the long-run decline in U.S. research productivity to these spatial forces, alongside traditional explanations such as fishing out and the burden of knowledge. Where inventors stand relative to each other in idea space matters as much for growth as how many of them there are. |
| Keywords: | Idea Space; Knowledge Spillovers; Research Productivity; Endogenous Growth; Technological Distance; Patent Embeddings |
| JEL: | O31 O41 O47 C55 |
| Date: | 2026–08–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:103607 |