Knowledge Management in Strategic Alliances: A Review of Empirical Evidence

Knowledge‐related and organizational learning processes in alliances have received much attention throughout the last 25 years. The field has generated a rapidly growing body of empirical evidence on how knowledge is managed in alliances. However, the sphere is highly complex, fragmented, incoherent, and heterogeneous in terms of the theoretical approaches applied. This paper presents an integrative and organizing framework for the empirical literature on knowledge management in strategic alliances. It illustrates how the knowledge management outcomes of knowledge creation, transfer and application are determined by four distinct sets of factors: knowledge characteristics, partner characteristics, partner interaction, and active knowledge management. Based on this framework, this review analyses and integrates empirical evidence in order to identify where findings converge and where results conflict. So far, research has focused strongly on singular interrelations between these four sets of factors and the transfer of knowledge. Conversely, the questions of how knowledge is created, retained, retrieved and applied and how the interplay of the different factors affects knowledge management in strategic alliances remain widely unexplored. The review concludes with a summary of the current state of the art in empirical research and discusses some promising avenues for future investigation.     

Innovation in Family Firms: A Systematic Literature Review and Guidance for Future Research

Through a systematic review of 118 peer‐reviewed journal articles published between 1961 and 2017, this article provides an integrative picture of the state of the art of the family firm innovation literature. Our aim is to widen existing understanding of innovation in family firms by building a theoretical bridge with studies in the mainstream innovation literature. Specifically, in identifying the main gaps in the literature and providing future research directions, our critical and dynamic picture of family‐specific determinants of innovation is intended to advance the debate on innovation in general, and family firms in particular.     

Management innovation: A systematic review and meta-analysis of past decades of research

Managerial innovation has gained increased popularity in research and practice because of its positive effects on organisational renewal and performance. Regardless of the growing number of studies on management innovation, there is still a lack of research that integrates and synthesises this body of knowledge. This study undertakes a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature to gain insight into existing empirical studies on management innovation. Our content analysis and review of 66 studies from 1981 to 2017 analyses the trends and background of research into management innovation. In addition, we develop a model of management innovation grounded in selected theoretical lenses to advance our understanding of the different drivers, moderators, mediators and outcomes of management innovation. Results of the meta-analysis show that management innovation is positively related to organisational size (r_c = .282), knowledge management (r_c = 0.608), organisational learning (r_c = 0.692), firms’ overall performance (r_c = 0.393), and financial performance (r_c = 0.269). Finally, we have identified several research gaps and provided a future research agenda in the context of managerial innovation.     

Collaborative Innovation with Customers: A Review of the Literature and Suggestions for Future Research*

Collaborative innovation with customers or users is increasingly important for the development of new products and services. In this paper we provide a review of the literature, placing emphasis on how firms engage in collaborative innovation with individual and business customers. Our review develops a synthesized conceptual framework from three existing models, and other streams of research, to organize this diverse body of literature. We review studies from several disciplines including innovation, strategy, management, marketing and information technology. Although much of the literature assumes net positive benefits from such collaboration, we also discuss contrary perspectives. We highlight areas in which research is needed for greater understanding of the strategic issues and for managing the collaborative process, and provide suggestions for future studies.     

Consolidation and fragmentation in environmental scanning: A review and research agenda

Environmental scanning is a broadly defined concept, having first received attention from scholars in the late 1960s. Over the years a number of similar and overlapping constructs have emerged in management literature. The aim of this study, via a systematic review and thematic analysis of relevant empirical research, is to consolidate foundation environmental scanning knowledge, demonstrate how scanning research has developed and fragmented over time, and propose an agenda for future research. The first contribution of our review is a new typology of environmental scanning research made up of five discrete research views, which provides a more comprehensive and contemporary overview of the field than previous studies. The second is a proposed agenda for future research that explicitly acknowledges the role of technology, an area that is presently underdeveloped in foundation scanning literature. The third contribution is to signpost future directions for research on scanning and organisational performance using a number of theoretical perspectives. The overall outcome of our review is to move scanning research on from increasingly incremental contributions concerned with context to a place where the changing role of technology and the mechanisms through which environmental scanning contributes to competitive advantage can be more thoroughly understood.     

创新支点还是保守枷锁：绿色供应链管理实践如何撬动企业绩效？

现有研究表明,绿色供应链管理实践和绿色创新均对企业绩效产生显著影响,但缺乏对上述三者内部关系的深入阐释。本文基于知识基础观,从动态开放视角分别引入双元知识搜索和绿色社会资本两个变量,构建三阶调节中介效应模型,探究企业绿色供应链管理实践对绿色创新和企业绩效之间深层次的作用机制。研究结果显示：绿色供应链管理实践撬动企业绩效增长的关键在于绿色创新在两者之间发挥中介作用;同时依赖于双元知识搜索对该中介作用的调节效应,且上述双元知识搜索的调节效应受绿色社会资本的再次正向调节。本文从理论上延伸了绿色供应链管理研究范畴;从实践上为企业从绿色供应链管理实践中获益提供借鉴和指导。     

The Impact of Alliance Management Capabilities on Alliance Attributes and Performance: A Literature Review

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter‐firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing between partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC) – firms' abilities to capture, share, store and apply alliance management knowledge – as an important antecedent of performance. This paper reviews 90 studies on AMC and makes two important contributions to the literature. First, the review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. The novel classification distinguishes between general and partner‐specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper offers a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance, by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, the review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge‐sharing between partners, shared partner understanding and the pursuit of collective goals. The review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. The authors note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining the classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance.     

生产率困境的形成与治理机制：一个新的理论框架

生产率困境是创新经济学、战略管理、运营管理和组织科学关注的中心问题之一。然而,这方面的文献分散在不同的研究领域中,因而,迄今为止,这方面的知识是碎片化的。以1978年到2018年间的225篇文献为样本,本文系统地考察了生产率困境的形成机制和治理方式。首先,本文描述了这方面文献的演进脉络,进而形成了3个不同但是互补的研究视角。然后,从这3个视角出发,本文分析了生产率困境的前因后果。最后,将这3个视角综合起来,我们发展了一个关于生产率困境的综合性的理论框架,系统地揭示了生产率困境的形成机制和治理方式。研究结果表明,在给定的技术范式下,技术发展存在自然和经济的极限,因而,生产率的增长最终会缓慢下来。重要的是,由于效率-创新冲突的存在,企业对生产率的追求使得它们不具有通过颠覆式创新推动技术范式转换的激励。进一步,即使企业具有这种激励,它们在追求效率的过程中发展起来的核心能力变成了核心粘性,因而失去了颠覆式创新的能力。于是,企业对短期生产率的追求反过来使得它们难以突破生产率增长的极限,进而长期锁定在生产率困境中。     

高新技术网络企业知识创新能力影响因素分析——基于西安高新区企业的实证研究

在知识经济时代,知识创新作为知识管理中的重要环节,是提升竞争能力的有效途径,但现有文献对网络企业知识创新能力的影响因素仍然缺乏系统、全面的分析。通过回顾国内外研究,本文以西安高新区122家企业为研究对象,对知识创新能力的关键影响因素进行了实证研究。结果表明:(1)知识属性虽然对知识创新能力并不能产生直接影响,然而却能够通过知识共享意愿对知识创新能力产生间接影响;(2)知识吸收对知识创新能力并不能产生直接影响,然而却能够通过知识共享意愿或网络异质性间接影响知识创新能力;(3)网络异质性与知识共享意愿直接影响知识创新能力;(4)四个因素对企业知识创新能力的影响程度大小为:知识吸收>网络异质性>知识共享意愿>知识属性。     

On How Firms Located in an Industrial District Profit from Knowledge Spillovers: Adoption of an Organic Structure and Innovation Capabilities

The canonical approach argues that firms located in industrial districts enjoy advantages for both innovation and performance as a consequence of the exceptionally strong knowledge spillovers that flow freely and spontaneously within them. However, diffusion of shared competences is not as easy and free as postulated in the literature. Using the resource‐based view, we study whether clustered firms perform better than non‐clustered firms, by providing empirical evidence that location of firms in an industrial district does not directly create innovation capabilities or economic rents. This research question is important because it enables us to better understand how firms benefit from this external knowledge flow, both to create advantages in technological innovation and to obtain superior organizational performance. To stand out in capabilities that are often localized at the centre of the same industrial district, a firm needs to develop a learning internal micro‐environment capable of better absorbing localized knowledge spillovers. In particular, the organic form is revealed as a configuration well suited to combining structural flexibility with the productive flexibility offered by the district and to strengthening technological innovation capabilities, thus improving organizational performance.     

技术独立董事可以提高R&D产出效率吗?——来自中国证券市场的研究

与以往大量探讨研发投入影响因素的文献不同,本文从R&D产出效率视角,考察了技术独立董事制度对其的影响。结果发现,我国上市公司增加研发投入并未带来创新水平的显著提高。而聘请技术独立董事的公司能够提升R&D产出效率,并且当上市公司同时设置技术执行董事和技术独立董事时,R&D产出效率更高,但本文没有发现技术独立董事薪酬对R&D产出效率起到激励作用。本文的结论为我国政府和公司制定创新战略以及独立董事制度建设提供了参考价值。     

Strategic and operational management of organizational resilience: Current state of research and future directions

This article uses both a systematic literature search and co-citation analysis to investigate the specific research domains of organizational resilience and its strategic and operational management to understand the current state of development and future research directions.The research stream on the organizational and operational management of resilience is distant from its infancy, but it can still be considered to be in a developing phase. We found evidence that the academic literature has reached a shared consensus on the definition of resilience, foundations, and characteristics and that in recent years, the main subfield of research has been supply chain resilience. Nevertheless, the literature is still far from reaching consensus on the implementation of resilience, i.e., how to reach operational resilience and how to create and maintain resilient processes. Finally, based on the results of in-depth co-citation and literature analysis, we found seven fruitful future research directions on strategic, organizational and operational resilience.     

A Reflective Review of Disruptive Innovation Theory

Disruptive Innovation Theory has created a significant impact on management practices and aroused plenty of rich debate within academia. Copious as the studies are, the scattered and conflicting nature of the literature on disruptive innovation in the last decade may pose a state of ambiguity for future research, thus necessitating a comprehensive review at this juncture. This paper first clarifies the basic concept and potential misinterpretations of the theory. Believing in the predictive value of the theory on firm performance, the authors then summarize and critique the research on how to enable potential disruptive innovation from internal, external, marketing and technology perspectives. The different perspectives inspired the authors to identify a number of key research directions within the disruptive innovation research domain. Potential future research is also briefly discussed by integrating disruptive innovation with other research domains, such as open innovation. Finally, in addition to theoretical contributions, the authors make practical contributions by outlining a series of potential inhibitors and enablers of disruptive innovation as managerial ‘take‐aways’.     

Research on Markets for Inventions and Implications for R&D Allocation Strategies

Several streams of literature have examined the phenomenon of “markets for inventions”, that is, the trade of elements of knowledge which are “disembodied” from individuals, organizations, and products. The aims of this paper are to bring together the various streams of research in this area and discuss their major assumptions and limitations, in order to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the phenomenon, and identify promising paths for future research. We start our review by identifying the object of market exchange—that is, an invention whose knowledge has been codified and disembodied from individuals, organizations, or artifacts. We then identify those factors that enable firms to trade inventions, distinguishing between institutional-, firm-, and industry-level factors. We close our analysis of the extant literature by discussing the implications of markets for inventions for firm behavior and performance. Against this background, we highlight an important avenue for future research. A neglected implication of the development of invention markets is that firms are confronted with a wide variety of technological paths from which to choose, because the opportunity to acquire technologies on the market offers them a greater variety that can their internal R&D departments. However, the streams of research on markets for inventions and on R&D allocation strategies have been surprisingly disconnected so far. Hence, in the final section, we start to establish and explore the link between these literatures, and to identify a research agenda in this domain.     

中小企业全面创新管理实施框架与典型模式

全面创新管理作为创新管理的新范式,通过各种创新要素的有机组合与协同创新来提升企业创新能力;中小企业在规模、管理、技术以及产业等方面的特点,使其在实施全面创新管理方面有自身实际特点.结合实际调研和理论分析,构建中小企业全面创新管理实施框架,并初步分析了有代表性的三种典型实施模式,以更好的指导中小企业创新实践.     

Searching for innovation: Product,process, and business model innovations and search behavior in established firms

Prior research indicates that search practices are an important part of the innovation process. But where established firms search for different innovation types is not clear. Drawing on knowledge-based theory of innovation and using state-of-the-art statistical techniques (copula with Bayesian inference), we find that established firms predominantly rely on several external sources (broad external search) when introducing new business models, on internal and external sources with high intensity (deep search) when innovating processes, and on broad and deep external search when innovating products. We explain that broad external search is important for business model innovation (BMI) because increased exploration is needed when introducing new business models that rely on general rather than specialized technical or tacit business knowledge. We contribute to the innovation and business model literatures by nuancing the differences between innovation types (BMI, product, and process innovation) and the associated search behavior. It is important to consider these differences because they give us clues to understand how established firms can explore unfamiliar territories through BMI.     

Governance Considerations for Seeker–Solver Relationships: A Knowledge‐Based Perspective in Crowdsourcing for Innovation Contests

The need to solve innovation problems and insource knowledge has led to an increasing number of organizations engaging in crowdsourcing activities and subsequently establishing working relationships with winning solution providers. Using a knowledge‐based view and the problem‐solving perspective, we develop a theoretical framework suggesting how specific innovation problem attributes (i.e. the decomposability, formulation and search space of the problem) influence the governance decision (unilateral vs. bilateral) of seekers to manage the relationship with winning solvers. We empirically analyse the framework using 582 challenges broadcast on the NineSigma crowdsourcing platform. Our results indicate that problem attributes – the formulation and search space of the problem – have a positive effect on seekers’ preference towards unilateral governance structures. However, we did not find any empirical confirmation of the effect that the decomposability of the innovation problem has on seekers’ preference towards unilateral governance structures. This study offers several contributions to the crowdsourcing literature, and also has important implications for managers of organizations aiming to insource knowledge through crowdsourcing for innovation contests.     

Accelerating the Innovation Process: A Systematic Review and Realist Synthesis of the Research Literature

There is continued interest among academics, practitioners and policy‐makers in methods to achieve accelerated innovation. Academic studies of this complex phenomenon have succeeded in reaching a high degree of consensus on the antecedents of innovation speed. The aim in this review is to elucidate further the mechanisms underlying management interventions to promote speed. The review adopts a theory‐led, realist synthesis of innovation speed research – the first example of this methodology in management studies. The authors develop a new time‐based framework for categorizing the innovation‐speed literature. The framework has a CIMO logic, and is built by invoking the organizational studies literature on time. The authors contextualize the innovation‐speed literature in relation to the three generic temporal challenges faced by all organizations: reducing temporal uncertainty; resolving temporal conflicts over activities; and allocating resources amid conditions of temporal scarcity. They problematize extant explanations of innovation speed as not taking account of different temporal orientations (temporal dichotomies) within innovation work, and thereby neglecting a potential barrier to achieving accelerated innovation outcomes. They further draw on the literature on time in organizations to suggest new avenues of research, and methodological approaches new to the study of innovation speed. The principal contribution of this review is to offer a new conceptual perspective on the complex empirical research examining how innovation projects may be accelerated from original idea to launch.