The transformation of multinational corporations (MNCs) from an innovation perspective: some notes on the theories of MNCs

MNCs have a long history of evolution. A hundred years of internationalization process has transformed MNC greatly due to the evolution of the motives and the way companies integrate and expand their business around the world. Rapid liberalization, globalization and technological change especially in information and communication technology (ICT) sector have again revolutionized the transformation of the MNCs even further. As a consequence, the traditional version of the ownership-specific, localization and internalization advantages O.L.I) paradigm and recent new theories of the MNCs are inadequate to explain the dynamics and the growing of the MNCs from developed and emerging economies. This paper argues that the traditional International Business Theories of MNCs should seek cooperation from an innovation perspective approach such as Rothwell’s five generations of innovation process and open innovation approach proposed by Chesbrough in order to strengthen the theories of MNCs. Since both approaches emphasize the role of external factors such as the role of knowledge, expertise, university and networks which are lacking in the traditional resource-based theory. The combination of O.L.I paradigm and innovation approaches will certainly strengthen the capability of the MNCs theories to generalize about how MNCs from emerging economies are similar and dissimilar to more traditional MNCs from developed countries in the era of rapid globalization.     

Relationship between social network structure dynamics and innovation: Micro-level analyses of virtual cross-functional teams in a multinational B2B firm

The goal of this study was to examine whether social network analysis has a significant effect on new business development (NBD) performance as a key innovation performance index in 10 cross-functional teams in multinational firms, and then determine the ways in which the social network analysis data can be used to maximize NBD performance. This study was based on experimental data from actual teams' communications in a virtual environment via information and communication technology (ICT). We focused on three social indices: network density, clique participation index (CPI) as a modified clique, and the standard deviation of structural holes (SH_SD) measured by effective size. A regression analysis of the experimental data obtained in this longitudinal study demonstrated that CPI and SH_SD had a positive influence on NBD evolution, while network density affected it adversely.     

The p-median problem in a changing network: the case of Barcelona

In this paper a p-median-like model is formulated to address the issue of locating new facilities when there is uncertainty in demand, travel times or distance. Given several possible scenarios, the planner would like to choose a set of locations that will perform as well as possible over all future scenarios. This paper presents a discrete location model formulation to address this p-median problem under uncertainty. The model is applied to the location of fire stations in Barcelona.     

A decade of microprocessor innovation: an economist's perspective

During the decade following the introduction of the first microprocessor in 1971, 203 different microprocessors were introduced. Of these products, 69 were original designs whilst 134 were second-source versions, or copies, of the originals. This paper analyses the entire range of new microprocessors introduced during the period 1971–1981, and draws conclusions on what motivates the different manufacturers to produce the devices they do, the role of product standards and the role of second-source producers. The strategies of six major companies that produce original designs are considered in detail and show the emergence of a product leader.     

Information technology in open innovation: A resource orchestration perspective

Building on the resource orchestration view, we proposed a dual role of information technology (IT) in the form of IT-enabled resource acquisition (IRA) and IT-enabled resource operation (IRO) in determining innovation performance. Through analyzing the survey data from 235 organizations, we found that in a dynamic business environment, IRA assists organizations in accruing benefits from their open innovation (OI) strategies. In a less dynamic business environment, IRO enhances the impact of OI strategies on innovation performance, whereas IRA diminishes such an impact. Post-hoc interviews reveal further insights into how organizations utilize ITs (IRA and IRO) to obtain innovation benefits.     

Casting for service innovation: The roles of frontline employees

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of frontline employees (FLEs) in service innovation processes and how they contribute to these roles. In the literature, FLEs are argued to play an important role in service innovation; however, neither the potential types of roles nor what taking on these potential roles means to FLEs, have previously been studied. This study investigates FLEs' actions in different types of service innovation processes. Based on analyses of eight different service business units, FLEs are identified as having either of two sets of roles: (1) leading roles as idea creators, developers and implementers, or (2) supporting roles as problem reporters, advisors and executors. The analysis provides managers with guidelines which can help them to better utilize FLEs as contributors to service innovation, either as leading or supporting actors. These imply different management challenges, which are discussed. Advice on how to tackle these challenges is given on the basis of the findings.     

The changing usage of a mature campus-wide wireless network

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are now commonplace on many academic and corporate campuses. As “Wi-Fi” technology becomes ubiquitous, it is increasingly important to understand trends in the usage of these networks. This paper analyzes an extensive network trace from a mature 802.11 WLAN, including more than 550 access points and 7000 users over seventeen weeks. We employ several measurement techniques, including syslog messages, telephone records, SNMP polling and tcpdump packet captures. This is the largest WLAN study to date, and the first to look at a mature WLAN. We compare this trace to a trace taken after the network’s initial deployment two years prior.We found that the applications used on the WLAN changed dramatically, with significant increases in peer-to-peer and streaming multimedia traffic. Despite the introduction of a Voice over IP (VoIP) system that includes wireless handsets, our study indicates that VoIP has been used little on the wireless network thus far, and most VoIP calls are made on the wired network.We saw greater heterogeneity in the types of clients used, with more embedded wireless devices such as PDAs and mobile VoIP clients. We define a new metric for mobility, the “session diameter”. We use this metric to show that embedded devices have different mobility characteristics than laptops, and travel further and roam to more access points. Overall, users were surprisingly non-mobile, with half remaining close to home about 98% of the time.     

Road network structure and ride-sharing accessibility: A network science perspective

The prosperity of ride-sharing services has rippled in the communities of GIScience, transportation, and urban planning. Meanwhile, road network structure has been analyzed from a network science perspective that focuses on nodes and relational links and aims to predictive models. However, limited empirical studies have explored the relationship between road network structure and ride-sharing accessibility through such perspective. This paper utilizes the spatial Durbin model to understand the relationship between road network structure and ride-sharing accessibility, proxied by Uber accessibility, through classical network measures of degree, closeness, and betweenness centrality. Taking the city of Atlanta as a case study, we have found in addition to population density and road network density, larger values of degree centrality and smaller values of closeness centrality of the road network are associated with better accessibility of Uber services. However, the effects of betweenness centrality are not significant. Furthermore, we have revealed heterogeneous effects of degree centrality and closeness centrality on the accessibility of Uber services, as the magnitudes of their effects vary by different time windows (i.e., weekday vs. weekend, rush hour in the morning vs. evening). Network science provides us both conceptual and methodological measures to understand the association between road network structure and ride-sharing accessibility. In this study, we constructed road network structure measures with OpenStreetMap, which is reproducible, replicable, and scalable because of its global coverage and public availability. The study resonates with the notion of cities as the set of interactions across networks, as we have observed time-sensitive heterogeneous effects of road network structure on ride-sharing accessibility.     

An exploration of a quasi-stable online network: A longitudinal perspective

This study uses social capital theory and social network analysis to explore how relations in an online academic communication network impact the overall structure of that network. Social network analysis is a particularly advantageous methodological tool for linking changes in microlevel choices to macrolevel structural alterations. Results indicate the online communication network’s structure exists independent of changes in communication ties. Specifically degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and clique formation indicated communication ties are initiated and discontinued over a 7-month timeframe. However, the dynamic nature of the microlevel communication choices does not mirror the quasi-stable structure of the online network. Results provide avenues for future research.     

Collective action problems in public sector innovation: A business model perspective

We explore how the literature on business models can explain the outcomes of innovation attempts in the public sector. Our findings suggest that governments can access a well‐developed knowledge domain for a public sector area but have a weak ability to propagate its value for society. Drawing on the business model literature concerning interdependence and distributed agency, we illustrate how a collective action problem related to innovation may arise in the public sector. We illustrate this new category of public innovation challenge with the (failed) case of the Swedish civil contingencies system and subsequently discuss a new line of inquiry for future research.     

The impact of e-retail characteristics on initiating mobile retail services: A modular innovation perspective

The rise and challenges of m-commerce have led to an urgent need to examine how firms adopt the emerging sales channel. Early studies mainly discussed the differences between e-commerce and m-commerce. Our study shows the modular innovation from e-retailing to m-retailing, which changes the core component of service delivery but keeps the operations intact, provides more opportunities for well-entrenched firms. Using a dataset of e-retailers, we find e-retail characteristics have an impact on firm's migration to the mobile domain. Firms with online service competencies, economies of scale, and physical outlets are more inclined to exploit opportunities provided by mobile technologies.     

The dynamics of culture, innovation and organisational change: a nano-psychology future perspective of the psycho-social and cultural underpinnings of innovation and technology

This article addresses salient conceptual issues in social organisational psychology in probing change in organisational systems, e.g., culture, innovation and implementation, reflective practice and change models. Insights from chaos–complexity research in the natural sciences which underpin the dynamics of flux and change to unravel the hidden, the unexplained, the disordered will be built on to explore the phenomena of change from a social psychological perspective. The concept of nano-psychology is introduced to open up a creative debate in the social psychological field on creative change which builds on the nano-insights evolving in the natural science field.     

A trust evaluation scheme for complex links in a social network: a link strength perspective

Potential security threats pose a significant challenge to evaluating the trustworthiness of complex links among users in a social network. Traditional trust computation methods typically consider user comments or interaction, thereby reflecting the trustworthiness between users according to their past experiences. However, the tie strength, which reflects the closeness of user relationships, is also a potential factor for estimating the trustworthiness of links among users. To incorporate this indicator, we propose a trust evaluation scheme for complex links comprising two aspects: the reliability and strength of links among uses. Our main contributions are (1) a trust calculation method, including direct trust for directly linked users and indirect trust for indirectly linked users, which is established based on the comment factor, forwarding factor, and approving factor; (2) a link strength evaluation method to determine the trustworthiness of direct and indirect links between users considering comment stability, mutual trust, interaction frequency, and common neighbours and community similarity, and (3) a link trust evaluation algorithm based on the link trust matrix synthesizing the reliability and strength of links. The experimental results and analysis show that our proposed scheme is feasible and effective in improving the performance of trust evaluation in a social network.     

Strategic choices of inter-organizational information systems: A network perspective

As cooperation in a networked manner increases via various inter-organizational information systems (IOISs), it is important to choose appropriate IOISs for different types of organizations in the network environment. In this study, we analyzed customer-supplier relationships among organizations in five industries using social network analysis (SNA) methods and empirical data, aiming to help organizations strategically choose appropriate IOISs. Three types of customer-supplier networks were identified based on the network centralization comparison rate: customer-centric, supplier-centric and balanced networks. Based on the empirical findings in our analysis, we then propose strategies about how to choose appropriate IOISs for the firms in these networks and discuss the pros and cons of the choices. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical research that applied SNA methods to study customer-supplier networks in the context of inter-organizational information systems.     

Congestion control in social-based sensor networks: A social network perspective

Social-based sensor networks are prone to congestion due to the limited storage space on each node and the unpredictable end-to-end delay. In this paper, we aim to develop an efficient congestion control approach from the social network perspective. For this purpose, we first identify the role of social ties in the process of congestion and specify a list of major congestion factors. Based on these factors, we then model the congestion control as a multiple attribute decision making problem (MADM), in which the weight of congestion factors is measured by an entropy method. We present a MADM-based congestion control approach that determines a set of forwarding messages and its transmission order on each encounter event. Moreover, we design a buffer management scheme that deletes messages whose removal would incur the least impact upon the network performance when the buffer overflows. Extensive real-trace driven simulation is conducted and the experimental results finally validate the efficiency of our proposed congestion control approach.     

Locating centers in a dynamically changing network,and related problems

In a dynamically changing network, the costs or distances between locations are changing in each discrete time period. We consider the location of emergency facilities that must minimize the maximum distance to any customer on the network across all time periods. We call the problem of locating p centers over k underlying networks corresponding to k periods the k-Network p-Center problem. The problem is considered when, in each period, the network satisfies the triangle inequality. In this paper, we provide a polynomial time 3-approximation algorithm for Δ k-Network p-Center for the case k=2. We discuss generalizations inspired by this problem to other optimization problems with multiple underlying networks and the objective of finding a single solution that varies as little as possible from the optimum for each network. The additional combinatorial problems discussed include: sorting; perfect matching; shortest path; minimum spanning tree; and minimum cut. All are shown to be NP-hard for k⩾2.     

QoS and energy efficiency in network wide broadcasting: A MAC layer perspective

In this paper we investigate the role of medium access control on the performance of network-wide real-time data broadcasting through flooding using three MAC protocols (IEEE 802.11, CPS, and MH-TRACE) in terms of QoS (packet delivery ratio, packet delay, and delay jitter) and energy dissipation. We conduct extensive simulations to evaluate the performance of network-wide broadcasting through flooding in the node density, traffic load, and network size/topology parameter space. The results of our study show that different MAC protocols produce better performance than the others in different parts of the parameter space. Thus, in designing network layer broadcast architectures, the characteristics of the medium access control layer should be given the utmost importance to ensure the satisfactory performance of the system.     

Establishing and managing a network for continuous innovation: Invoking organizational pressure

Social networks in organizations have been identified as important both in terms of increasing our understanding of innovation and for organizations to realize innovation outcomes. While previous studies have informed us of the importance of networks for innovation, we know little of how companies intentionally can design and utilize networks to achieve continuous innovation. The aim of this paper is to explore how a network for continuous innovation can be established and managed. A longitudinal case study has been performed using data covering the establishment and subsequent management of a network for supporting continuous innovation, spanning the product management and R&D department of a large multinational company. The results reveal the potential to use intra‐organizational networks to invoke organizational pressure conducive for making innovation happen. This pressure is induced by autonomy and self‐organizing in the network and consists of reciprocal expectations and demands between the top (management) and the bottom (employees involved in the network) of the organizational hierarchy. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Team structure and team performance in IS development: a social network perspective

Teamwork during IS development (ISD) is an important issue. This paper discusses the relationship between team structure and ISD team performance using a social network approach. Based on empirical evidence collected from 25 teams in a system analysis and design course, we found that:

• (1)Group cohesion was positively related to overall performance.
• (2)Group conflict indexes were not significantly correlated with overall performance.
• (3)Group characteristics, e.g., cohesion and conflict, fluctuated in different phases, but in later stages, much less cohesion occurred and the advice network seemed to be very important.
• (4)Group structures seemed to be a critical factor for good performance.

Further in-depth studies were conducted on teams exhibiting the highest and lowest performance to determine their differences from a sociogram analysis perspective.     

A study on e-learning take-up intention from an innovation adoption perspective: A case in China

This research aims to examine, from an innovation adoption perspective, Chinese students’ intention of taking up e-learning degrees. A survey of Chinese students was conducted to reveal their perceptions concerning innovation attributes relevant to e-learning and their intentions of taking e-learning programmes provided by UK universities. Given the rapid development in e-learning and its potential impact on how learning takes place, this research argues that e-learning take-up represents adoption of an innovation in educational services, rather than just an IT technology. It therefore examined e-learning adoption using Rogers’s relational model of perceived innovation attributes. Rogers’s model was adapted to the e-learning context. A questionnaire survey was developed to collect data from a sample of Chinese students (n = 215). Prior to final analysis the dimensionality and validity of the implementation of Rogers relational model was assessed. Findings suggested that only perceived compatibility and trialability have significant influence on e-learning adoption intention.