Search results

This paper aims to investigate the impact of exploratory innovation on the quality of new product development (NPD), and how do polychronicity of the top management team (TMT) and interfunctional coordination (IFC) moderate the above relationship.

The hypotheses were tested by the survey data of 210 Chinese enterprises. Hierarchical regression analyzes were used to test the hypotheses in this research.

The results indicate that exploratory innovation facilitates NPD quality. TMT polychronicity weakens the effect of exploratory innovation on NPD quality. IFC strengthens the effect of exploratory innovation on NPD quality.

This study provides managers with insight on the relationship between exploratory innovation and NPD quality. To improve NPD quality, managers should be paying more attention to exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this study helps managers to understand how the relationship changes with the increases of TMT polychronicity and IFC.

This study highlights the value of exploratory innovation in increasing NPD quality based on the knowledge-based view. By incorporating TMT polychronicity and IFC based on the attention-based view, it offers much richer understandings of how exploratory innovation affects NPD quality.

The purpose of this study is to critically evaluate the canonical contribution of the classical theories of multinational enterprises (MNE) and complement them with congruous multi-theoretical lenses to a propose a meta-theoretical view for competitive advantage. The proposed framework is applied to fundamental questions of MNE, and exploratory insights are revealed.

This study sought to review the literature on various paradigms such as resource-based view, knowledge-based view, attention-based view, relational view, dynamic capability view and institution-based view to propose a meta-theoretical approach explicating the phenomenon of competitiveness.

This study proffers that the key to global competitiveness lies in building micro-foundational, multidimensional and multilevel multinational orchestration capabilities. The requisite orchestration capabilities are capabilities par excellence that explain: how organizational capabilities originate through the cognition of individual employees at the micro level; how individual-level abilities are amplified when they are harnessed through relational capabilities to form knowledge capabilities at the meso-level; and how the confluence of knowledge capabilities and higher order dynamic capabilities gives rise to heterogeneous firm-level knowledge-based dynamic capabilities that can be combined with institution capabilities to aggrandize the prediction of competitive advantage for MNEs.

The successful development of MNE competitiveness as a field of academic inquiry, brought about by an increasing amount of theoretical specialization, has come at the price of significant fragmentation of the overall scientific quest. The abovementioned paradigms and their underlying constructs have primarily been conceptualized in silos. The classical theories of MNE have been used a starting point to which complementary multidisciplinary views have been scaffolded to gain a more nuanced understanding of global competitiveness.

By integrating perspectives from the resource-based view, attention-based view, upper echelon theory and competitive dynamics (CD), the authors seek to understand how chief executive officer (CEO) vigilance influences the way resources are utilized in relation to competitive behavior.

This study's empirical analysis is conducted using a longitudinal design in the US software and IT services industry with a final sample consisting of 44 publicly traded firms and 471 firm-year observations from 1995 to 2009. The authors respectively use the fixed-effects negative binomial model and generalized estimating equation (GEE) model to test the effects of technology resource breadth on competitive intensity and competitive deviance and the interacting effects with CEO attention broadness and uniqueness.

This study's results show that CEO vigilance (attention broadness and uniqueness) interacts with technology resource breadth to jointly influence competitive intensity and deviance. Firms with vigilant CEOs utilize firm resources to compete less intensively but in an unconventional way.

This study reveals that when CEOs have a broader focus and attend to a wide range of information, their ability to quickly utilize firm resources for formulating competitive actions decreases. Consequently, it is crucial for CEOs to acknowledge the limitations of their attentional capacity. They need to understand that the allocation of their attention and information processing capacity has significant implications for the speed and quality of their decision-making processes.

The authors conceptualize and operationalize CEO vigilance, which is a novel construct that has not been studied. The authors show that CEO vigilance plays critical roles in utilizing resources to compete. This study offers significant research implications for attention-based view, upper-echelons theory, CD perspective and resource-based view.

This chapter first examines the role of attention in the garbage can model of decision making and compares it both to prior approaches in the Carnegie School tradition and the attention-based view of the firm. Both the garbage can model and the attention-based view rely on the same assumption, one that is rarely recognized nor understood – that organizational decision making is characterized by situated attention, where organizational participants vary across time and place in what they attend to. In the garbage can model, decision opportunities are the temporal contexts for situated attention; in the attention-based view, attention is situated in both time and place within the organization's communication channels. In the garbage can, situated attention is also shaped by the ecology of problems and opportunities competing for attention. The final part examines the determinants and consequences of tight versus loose coupling of channels in organizations and its effects on participants’ situated attention. Attention structures external to channels and the architecture of channel structures shape the degree of coupling found in organizations. In viewing coupling as a variable, the chapter suggests that a modified garbage can model, combined with an increased focus on situated attention, provides the foundations for a more general theory of nonroutine decision making.

Using the attention-based view, this paper aims to examine whether and how board composition might influence the allocation of board attention to corporate sustainability.

This is a conceptual paper that uses a theoretical perspective pointing to the importance of generating a board composition that might benefit both business case framing and paradoxical framing, a typology introduced in managerial cognition literature to explain managerial decision-making.

The conclusions emerging from the reviewed literature suggest that boards that have realized an independence of perspective focus on shareholder profit maximization at the expense of considerations of corporate sustainability. It emerges that women directors who have adopted paradoxical framing can enable boards to consider not only economic but also environmental and social issues of sustainability during board decision-making. Further, it is noted that the effect of gender diversity on allocation of board attention to corporate sustainability is contingent upon contextual (board openness) and structural (chairperson leadership) factors that facilitate social interactions inside boardrooms.

By considering alternative cognitive frames as well as social interactions, the propositions contribute to a better understanding of the allocation of board attention regarding ambiguous sustainability issues.

Current open innovation (OI) and external knowledge search (EKS) research primarily shows a positive linear relationship between EKS and innovation at an individual level. However, organizational scholarship argues that excessive EKS may harm innovation. This study combines the knowledge-based view (KBV) and attention-based view (ABV) to articulate a nonlinear theory of EKS and innovation at the individual level.

The authors constructed a multi-sourced dataset covering 59,798 USA pharmaceutical patents spanning from 1975 to 2014 and employed negative binomial fixed-effect models to examine theoretical hypotheses.

We find a significant concave curvilinear relationship between EKS and innovation quantity as well as innovation quality at an individual level. An individual’s knowledge breadth and depth moderate the relationship between EKS and innovation, such that the threshold at which EKS has diminishing returns for individual innovation is higher for inventors with a broad range of knowledge and those with deeper expertise in the domain where they are innovating.

Managers should guide inventors toward a moderate investment of time and effort in EKS and should caution against over searching. Besides, managers should recognize that an inventor’s capacity for EKS is determined in part by their breadth of knowledge across various domains as well as the depth of knowledge they have in the knowledge domain where they are innovating.

We provide both parties with a clearer understanding of when EKS can begin to deteriorate an individual’s innovation performance why that deterioration occurs, and we also highlight two individual-level knowledge characteristics to take into consideration when deciding when to cease the EKS process.

This study provides a novel holistic understanding of OI and knowledge management for policymakers and organizations to nourish innovation dynamism and make the best of knowledge stocks in the community, which in turn will create endless power for sustainable social change and inclusive development.

This study contributes to OI theory by highlighting the non-linear nature of the relationship between EKS and innovation on an individual level. This represents a fundamental shift in theory on EKS and individual innovation by suggesting a major rethinking of how the two concepts relate, revealing the dark side of EKS in knowledge management if inventors engage in excessive EKS. Likewise, our study’s incorporation of the ABV informs KBV scholarship by highlighting the role of the limited attentional capacity of individuals in firm knowledge management.

Top management team (TMT) serves as the critical designer of a firm’s business model, whose cognition exerts key influence on business model design (BMD). Drawing insights from the managerial cognition and knowledge-based views, this paper aims to examine the effect of TMT transactive memory system on BMD and investigate how the relationship between TMT transactive memory system and BMD is contingent upon the firm’s strategic orientation.

Survey data collected from 210 Chinese firms was used to test the research hypotheses through multivariate regression analysis.

This paper reveals that TMT transactive memory system facilitates novelty- and efficiency-centered BMD. Furthermore, both differentiation orientation and cost leadership orientation can strengthen the effect of TMT transactive memory system on novelty-centered BMD; the impact of TMT transactive memory system on efficiency-centered BMD is weakened by differentiation orientation but strengthened by cost leadership orientation.

This paper adds to the business model literature by unraveling the effect of TMT transactive memory system on BMD, which not only enriches the internal cognitive antecedents of BMD but also provides an in-depth understanding of how TMTs can use their knowledge structure to proactively design a certain business model. Moreover, this paper also offers insights into how TMTs can better use transactive memory system to design business models according to the specific strategic orientation.

The attention-based view (ABV) of the firm highlights the role of decision makers’ attention in firm behavior. The ABV vastly improves our understanding of decision makers’ focus of attention; how that focus is situated in an organization’s procedural and communication channels; and how the distribution of the focus of attention among decision makers participating in those procedural and communication channels affects their understanding of a situation, their motivation to act, and, ultimately, their behavior. Significant progress has been made in recent years in refining and extending the ABV. However, the role of individual differences in the capacity to read other people’s desires, intentions, knowledge, and beliefs – that is, the theory of mind (ToM) – has remained on the sidelines. The ToM is a natural complement to the ABV. In this study, we explore how the ToM allows for an understanding of the advantage that organizations have over markets within the ABV.

The conditions that are constantly changing and transforming by digital technologies in today's world have forced businesses to think strategically and to comply with the rules and processes of strategic management. Technologies, such as the internet of things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data, especially in the Industry 4.0 ecosystem, cause some conflicts or constructive and destructive effects on the management approaches and management strategies of businesses. Businesses need to understand these technologies and their effects to maintain their existence and manage their resources and capabilities effectively and strategically. In this chapter, it is aimed to examine the conflicts with destructive and constructive effects of digital technologies on the strategic management of enterprises. For this purpose, the literature was searched qualitatively, and a conceptual study was carried out. At the beginning of the chapter, strategic management literature was researched, and strategic management approaches and views were examined. In the next part, digital technologies in the Industry 4.0 ecosystem are explained. In the last part, digital technologies and their impacts in terms of strategic management approaches (position approach, resource-based approach, and complementing views of resources-based approach) have been examined.

This paper aims to theoretically investigate a knowledge management model from the combined perspective of knowledge acquisition and knowledge application and its effect on organizational performance.

This study reviews prior research on knowledge acquisition and knowledge application, puts forward the concepts of “the extensiveness of knowledge acquisition” and “the concentration of knowledge application” and more importantly proposes an integrated model by combining these two dimensions. Four case examples of enterprises are subsequently described and analyzed to illustrate the sources of knowledge acquisition, the objects of knowledge application and their influences on organizational performance.

Four knowledge management modes and their impacts are confirmed in this study. Specifically, the organization of the turbojet engine mode (high extensiveness of knowledge acquisition and high concentration of knowledge application) can achieve good performance. The pipeline mode (high extensiveness of knowledge acquisition and low concentration of knowledge application) is the second, which has limited influence on good organizational performance. Organizations with the flashlight mode (low extensiveness of knowledge acquisition and high concentration of knowledge application) can achieve limited performance under the appropriate environment. The candle mode (low extensiveness of knowledge acquisition and low concentration of knowledge application) is the worst, performance of which is poor due to the break of the knowledge chain.

This paper holds that organizations should actively use the turbojet engine mode, adopt the pipeline mode and the flashlight mode cautiously, and avoid falling into the candle mode.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to propose the concepts of “the extensiveness of knowledge acquisition” and “the concentration of knowledge application,” and provides a combined model for analyzing differences in organizational performance from the perspective of knowledge.