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The literature on knowledge management and organizational improvisation have emerged as important perspectives for organizing, while existing almost in parallel. Both have significant implications for, inter alia, innovation and creativity, adaptability, and management in turbulent times. Previous research has considered the role of improvisation in innovation. We build on this literature to examine the specific role of improvisation in knowledge creation. Our assessment of organizational improvisation indicates that it constitutes an important potential source of knowledge, thus opening up a new avenue for exploring the strategic as well as political significance of embedded, situated knowledge. We argue that the rapprochement of the two literatures brings about the notion of “improvisational knowledge”. We develop the significance of this form of knowledge, focusing in particular on the challenges of appreciating and appropriating it as opposed to seeking to codify it. We offer propositions and identify some avenues for further research.

This paper aims to report the continental European jurisprudence origins and Roman Catholic social teaching parallels of post‐World War II Japanese industrial relations practices. It focuses on the modes of social relation in the Japanese legal employment ecology of the post‐World War II enterprise and is designed to aid understanding of Japanese management theory and practice. An additional purpose of the paper is to facilitate development of evaluative criteria for authentic adoption of Japanese management practices to other national settings.

The approach used is an analysis of Japanese sources using industrial relations theory to explore the “working rules” governing post‐World War II Japanese employment relations. This method, grounded in a source‐comparative method, results in the derivation of comparative employment ecology models of the USA, German, and Japanese enterprise. Against this background, the potential evangelization of the American workplace is discussed in reference to Roman Catholic social teaching.

Success in deploying Japanese management modes of production is contingent upon adaptive appropriation of their modes of social relations within the enterprise. Insofar as the latter derive from and/or reflect continental European jurisprudence and Roman Catholic social teaching, their deployment in other nations – such as the USA – becomes, first, easier to comprehend in principle (not being subject to Japanese concepts), and, second, a potentially potent form of workplace evangelization reflecting continental European industrial relations norms.

Authentic deployment of the Japanese management employment ecology is a form of “evangelization” of the US workplace. Furthermore, it asserts that this constitutes a potential evangelization toward continental European sensibility regarding employment rules, closely related to Roman Catholic social teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the expression of ambidexterity at the “between” projects level as well as the “within” project level in project-based information technology firms (PBITF). The research also provides a framework for the classification of specialised projects. This classification is essential to clarify the level of attention the project will receive with respect to the appropriation of resources and the requisite management bandwidth.

This paper draws on a nine-month long field-based qualitative study and ensures a rigorous triangulation of the findings through an analysis of archival data and actual project artefacts.

The authors bring forth three critical implications for practice. First, strategizing ambidexterity at the level of “between” projects and “within” projects is heavily dependent on the interaction among distributed actors and partners. Second, routines and actions to deal with manpower constraints are completely different at these two levels. Lastly, the classification framework of specialised projects proposed here should enable firms to appropriately apportion resources to engagements that are strategic in nature.

The study extends the concept of ambidexterity to the “within” project level and finds it relevant at the lowest level in the project-based structure. Also, the framework for the classification of specialised projects that is provided will assist decision makers in PBIT firms to decide the organisational response to such projects.

This paper aims to review ethical issues inherent in the theorisation and practice of knowledge management (KM) with specific attention to the conflict of knowledge ownership between organisations and individual employees.

Relevant literature was identified and reviewed via EPSCO host and ISIWeb.

The paper notes that knowledge, although rooted in individuals, is often claimed or treated as owned by organisations, creating a conflict of knowledge ownership. The paper argues that such an approach to appropriation and management of knowledge leads to tension in knowledge processes between organisations and individuals, and also among individuals. This situation may, in turn, jeopardise individuals' knowledge processing behaviours, and pose difficulties to organisations in managing knowledge effectively.

Offers a number of potential research questions that may be turned into research hypotheses and assessed experimentally to refine and develop an ethical approach to KM.

Highlights the need for a renewed moral contract between individuals and organisations, built on ethical constructs of trust, fairness, and justice, which may in turn lead to effective KM practices.

Offers an original conceptual approach to understand and resolve the conflict of knowledge ownership between organizations and individuals.

This study aims to investigate whether higher value creation leads to higher value appropriation and to identify the boundary conditions in a buyer–supplier relationship that can explain why a particular supplier can appropriate higher value than others.

The study uses questionnaire surveys. The sample of the survey has 150 publicly-listed supplier firms in Taiwan. The unit of analysis is the buyer–supplier relationship.

In the buyer–supplier relationship, suppliers’ bargaining power, partnership and a supplier’s original brand manufacturing (OBM) business can strengthen the positive relationship between value creation and value appropriation.

This study adopts the unilateral viewpoint of suppliers; however, some constructs might require dyadic evaluation. This study only explores the spillover effect of OBM business on the relationship between value creation and appropriation.

The spillover effect of a supplier’s OBM business in a buyer–supplier relationship allows the buyer to share more common benefits and the supplier to capture more private benefits as compensation. By broadening its customer base, a supplier can increase its bargaining power. A supplier can also maintain a strategic partnership with each essential buyer.

To avoid the dark-side effect of partnership, the model provides the contingency that a supplier can capture more value from a buyer–supplier relationship.

In contrast to the interest of describing and managing the social processes of knowing, information science and information and knowledge management research have put less emphasis on discussing how particular information becomes usable and how it is used in different contexts and situations. The purpose of this paper is to address this major gap, and introduce and discuss the applicability of the notion of situational appropriation of information for shedding light on this particular process in the context of daily information work practices of professionals.

The study is based on the analysis of 25 qualitative interviews of archives, library and museum professionals conducted in two Nordic countries.

The study presents examples of how individuals appropriate different tangible and intangible assets as information on the basis of the situation in hand.

The study proposes a new conceptual tool for articulating and conducting research on the process how information becomes useful in the situation in hand.

The situational appropriation of information perspective redefines the role of information management to incorporate a comprehensive awareness of the situations when information is useful and is being used. A better understanding how information becomes useful in diverse situations helps to discern the active role of contextual and situational effects and to exploit and take them into account as a part of the management of information and knowledge processes.

In contrast to orthodoxies of information science and information and knowledge management research, the notion of situational appropriation of information represents an alternative approach to the conceptualisation of information utilisation. It helps to frame particular types of instances of information use that are not necessarily addressed within the objectivistic, information seeker or learning oriented paradigms of information and knowledge management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how young British South Asian adults’ dual cultural identity is exhibited and reaffirmed through the appropriation of selfies.

The research adopts a qualitative perspective and utilises a combination of in-depth interviews and netnographic data.

The appropriation of the selfie phenomenon by young British South Asian adults reifies, endorses and reinforces their dual cultural identity. As such, their dual cultural identity is influenced by four factors: consonance between host and ancestral cultures, situational constraints, contextual requirements and convenience.

In terms of the selfie phenomenon, the study makes two major contributions: first, it analyses young British South Asian adults’ cultural dualism. Second, it explicates how their acculturation and their dual cultural identity are expressed through the appropriation of the selfie phenomenon.

Since young British South Asians represent a significant, and distinct, market, organisations serving this market can marshal insights from this research. As such, managers who apprise themselves of the selfie phenomenon of this group are better placed to meet their consumer needs. Account, therefore, should be taken of their twofold cultural identity and dual British/Asian identification. In particular, consideration should be given to their distinct and demonstrable traits apropos religiosity and social, communal, and familial bonding. The characteristics were clearly evident via their interactions within social media. Consequently, senior marketing managers can utilise the aforementioned in positioning their organisations, their brands and their products and services.

The study details a new quadripartite framework for analysing young British South Asian adults’ acculturation that leads to the formation of their dual cultural identity and presents a dynamic model that explicates how cultural identity is expressed through the use and appropriation of technology.

This study aimed to examine the similarities and differences between the ability to analyze the environment and exploit new knowledge (absorptive capacity) and the skills to generate value from innovation (appropriation). These fields have similar origins and are sometimes confused by practitioners and academics.

A review was conducted based on a full-text analysis of 681 and 431 papers on appropriation and absorptive capacity, respectively, from Scopus, Science Direct and Lens, using methodologies such as text mining, backward citation analysis, modularity clustering and latent Dirichlet allocation analysis.

In business disciplines, the fields are considered different; however, in other disciplines, it was found that some authors defined them quite similarly. The citation analysis results showed that appropriation was more relevant to absorptive capacity, or vice versa. From the dimension perspective, it was found that although appropriation was considered a relevant element for absorptive capacity, the last models did not include it. Finally, it was found that studies on both topics identified the importance of appropriation and absorptive capacity for innovation performance, knowledge management and technology transfer.

This is one of the first studies to examine in-depth the relationship between appropriation and absorptive capacity, bridging a gap in both fields.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the appropriation of control rooms based on value-based integrated performance management tools implemented in all publicly funded health organizations in Quebec (Canada) as a form of legitimate sociomaterial work.

Multi-site organizational ethnographic case studies in two Integrated health and social services centers, with narrative process analysis of triangulated qualitative data collected through non-participant observation (163 h), individual semi-structured interviews (N = 34), and document review (N = 143).

Three types of legitimate sociomaterial work are accomplished when actors appropriate control rooms: 1) reformulating performance management work; 2) disrupting accountability work and; 3) effecting value-based integrated performance management. Each actor (tools, institutions and people) follows recurrent institutional work-paths: tools consistently engage in disruptive work; institutions consistently engage in maintaining work, and people consistently engage in creation work. The study reveals the potential of performance management tools as “effective integrators” of the technological, managerial, policy and delivery levels of data-driven health system performance and improvement.

This paper draws on theoretically informed empirical insights to develop actionable knowledge around how to better design, implement and adapt tool-driven health system change: 1) Packaging the three agents of data-driven system change in health care: tools, institutions, people; 2) Redefining the search for performance in health care in the context of value creation, and; 3) Strengthening clinical and managerial relevance in health performance management practice.

The authors aim to stimulate new and original scholarship around the under-theorized concept of sociomaterial work, challenging theoretical, ontological and practical conceptions of work in healthcare organizations and beyond.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the service management literature by identifying the possible relationship between customer value seen from the customer perspective and from the firm perspective, and its potential influence on the value created for the service customer. The authors have not found any papers which focus on the relationship between these different perspectives of customer value, and the aim is to fill this gap in the literature.

The paper proposes that a relationship between the different perspectives exists and attempts to create an integrated vision of customer value.

The proposed model shows that it is the relationship between customer value from the customer ' s point of view and customer value from the firm ' s point of view that really creates value.

The paper can influence the current service management of firms with regard to customer value creation in several ways.

From the existing literature, it is deduced that customer value can be seen as perceived value (the customer perspective) or as value creation and appropriation (the firm perspective). The paper proposes that these three types of value are equivalent in an important level and should always be interrelated.