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This study aims to investigate the influence of inventors’ abilities to acquire external knowledge, provide broad and professional knowledge and patenting output (i.e. different types of inventors) on the formation of structural holes.

The authors collected 59,798 patents applied for and granted in the USA by 33 of the largest firms worldwide in the pharmaceutical industry between 1975 and 2014. A random-effects tobit model was used to test the hypotheses.

The inventors’ ability to acquire external knowledge contributes to the formation of structural holes. While inventors’ ability to provide broad knowledge positively affects the formation of structural holes, their ability to provide professional knowledge works otherwise. In addition, key inventors and industrious inventors are more likely to form structural holes than talents.

The results identify individual factors that affect the formation of structural holes and improve the understanding of structural hole theory. This study is unique in that most scholars have studied the consequences of structural hole formation rather than their antecedents. Studies on the origin of structural holes neglect the effect of inventors’ knowledge abilities and patenting output. By addressing this gap, this study contributes to a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of structural holes. The results can guide managers in managing structural holes in accordance with inventors’ knowledge abilities and patenting outputs, which optimize the allocation of network resources.

The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between the value of created knowledge and financial performance. It also assesses how knowledge breadth moderates the aforementioned relationship.

Focusing on the US biotechnology industry, the study matches patents data from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the United States Patent and Trademark Office with firms’ data from COMPUSTAT. Generalized least squares estimation is used as an analytical technique, and random-effects models are used to evaluate effects of the independent variables based on both within- and between-organization variances.

The findings reveal that biotechnological firms that create knowledge of higher values are likely to have higher financial performance than those creating knowledge of less value. Moreover, knowledge breadth is shown to positively moderate the relationship between knowledge value and firm performance.

Some of the limitations include not controlling for more firm-related and environmental factors that might have influenced firm performance.

The study provides evidence that the quality of knowledge should be significantly considered when creating new knowledge. That is, managers should prioritize the creation of highly valuable knowledge, even if it occasionally results in creating fewer numbers of patents. The paper also suggests that creating valuable knowledge that is broad and flexible should be an important objective for managers as it provides more opportunities to generate future rents.

The study emphasizes how the value of created knowledge impacts the financial performance of firms. It also illustrates how knowledge breadth moderates that relationship. The paper contributes to a stream of research that links knowledge management abilities and firm performance.

The purpose of the paper is to present a vocabulary of terms that clearly define knowledge management (KM) activities in order to move towards consensus in the adoption of a common language within the field.

Existing literature across several disciplines has been integrated to provide a clear description of the sorts of activities an individual undertakes in order to move from knowledge acquisition to innovation, and a clarification of the terms used to describe such activities is put forth.

Adoption of a common vocabulary to describe KM activities provides a platform to better understand how best to manage these activities, and enables clearer identification of the knowledge management capabilities held by various sectors within the broader business community.

There is a need to undertake empirical research and in‐depth case studies of knowledge management practices using a common vocabulary as a framework with which to interpret findings.

The adoption of a common frame of reference to describe knowledge management activities will deepen understanding of current KM practices, enable identification inhibitors and facilitators of KM, lead to increased dialogue between academia and industry, and present opportunities to the education sector to incorporate such a vocabulary into its curriculum.

The framework presented here will remove the veil of mystery that currently clouds knowledge management and facilitate broader uptake of KM practices, thereby realising the benefits of a knowledge‐based economy in the broader business community.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between Business-to-business professional service firms (B2B PSFs) customer cooperation capability (CCC) and its financial performance. This study explores how deep and broad expert and customer knowledge assist PSFs to enhance CCC and increase financial performance.

A multiple informant survey was designed and administered to B2B PSFs’ managers in Taiwan.

The results indicate that customer and expert knowledge improve PSFs’ CCC and that CCC has a positive U-shaped relationship with financial performance. Importantly, the ability to control for the efficiency of customer cooperation moderates the U-shaped relationship between CCC and financial performance by diminishing the negative effect of low levels of CCC.

The contribution of this study rests on the theory developed and empirical support disclosing the complex relationship between PSFs’ CCC and financial performance. The study further contributes to the literature by presenting different effect of deep and broad expert and customer knowledge on development of CCC. The study extends the literature by introducing control for efficiency of customer cooperation as a mechanism that has the capacity to compensate for lower levels of CCC.

This paper aims to analyze the extent to which the influence of external knowledge search on innovation performance is contingent on both a firm’s innovation strategy and the industry context in which it operates.

The paper adopts a contingent approach that centers analysis on the influence of situational factors, either exogenous or endogenous to the organization, as determinants of the external knowledge search in promoting the firm’s innovation performance. The empirical study is based on a large sample of 18,955 firms operating in 29 industries that belong to 13 European countries.

This analysis reveals that a broad knowledge search is more effective for firms that innovate in new goods, while a deeper knowledge search is more effective for firms that innovate in new services. The results of this study also indicate that external knowledge search varies across industries, with search depth being used more in industries in which the knowledge development process is cumulative and appropriable, while the external breadth search is preferred in industries with a high level of technological opportunity.

The current approach implies recognizing that the knowledge search strategies may not always be effective, and that firms should align the search strategy to both internal and external factors. Analyzing the influence of these factors can help managers to better choose the type of knowledge search (e.g. intensive or extensive search) that best aligns with the firm’s innovation objectives.

For firms entering a foreign market for the first time, institutional distance can be thought of as being insufficient in the sense that knowledge gap issues associated with large distances are not easily resolved. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of knowledge sufficiency and the implications that this concept holds for assuaging these issues.

The concept of knowledge sufficiency is developed into a practical framework. The framework is comprised of the knowledge that firms accumulate about potential host countries. This accumulated knowledge is disaggregated into components that provide the basic structure of the knowledge sufficiency framework and facilitate a systematic assessment of accumulated knowledge.

Accumulated knowledge about foreign market risk factors that exist in potential host countries is disaggregated into three components. The breadth of knowledge component is designed to help answer the question: what do firms know about foreign market risk factors in potential host countries? The depth of knowledge component is designed to help answer the question: how much do firms know about foreign market risk factors in potential host countries. The quality of knowledge component is designed to answer the question: are firms confident in what they know about foreign market risk factors in potential host countries?

There is a tendency for strategic decision makers in firms to feel that they have “deep” knowledge of foreign market risk factors when they may actually have only “surface” knowledge of these factors. The result is likely to be an unwarranted lowering of the risk they perceive to exist in potential host countries. Consequently, the host country selected for entry may not be optimal and the mode of entry may be inappropriate. The issue to be resolved is how to ascertain how much knowledge firms actually possess about these foreign market risk factors.

Selecting the “right” foreign market and entering that market in the “right” way is unquestionably one of the most important topics in the international literature and has been extensively studied. However, there is no central repository of finding from these studies that will help firms going international for the first time to systematically assess whether their choice of market and entry mode is optimal. Utilization of the knowledge sufficiency framework will significantly improve firms’ chances of entering the “right” foreign markets in the “right” way, which holds practical implications for their initial and long-term performance in these markets.

For firms entering a foreign market for the first time, answers to two questions are essential: what foreign market should we enter? How should we enter that foreign market? The extant literature does not provide a framework that allows firms to systematically search for answers to these questions such that, when satisfactorily found, will boost confidence that answers to these two questions are optimized. In addition to filling an important gap in the extant literature, the framework's usefulness as an aid for making internationalization decisions also makes an important contribution to practice.

Leaders of successful organizations are consistently searching for better ways to improve performance and results. Frequent disappointments with past management initiatives have motivated managers to gain new understandings into the underlying, but complex mechanisms ‐ such as knowledge ‐ which govern an enterprise’s effectiveness. Knowledge Management, far from being a management “fad”, is broad, multi‐dimensional and covers most aspects of the enterprise’s activities. To be competitive and successful, experience shows that enterprises must create and sustain a balanced intellectual capital portfolio. They need to set broad priorities and integrate the goals of managing intellectual capital and the corresponding effective knowledge processes. This requires systematic Knowledge Management. With knowledge as the major driving force behind the “economics of ideas”, we can expect that the emphasis on knowledge creation, development, organization and leverage will continue to be the prime focus for improving society.

This paper aims to present findings from a study of non-profit organizations (NPOs), including a model of knowledge needs that can be applied by practitioners and scholars to further develop the NPO sector.

A survey was conducted with NPOs operating in Canada and Australia. An analysis of survey responses identified the different types of knowledge essential for each organization. Respondents identified the importance of three pre-determined themes (quantitative data) related to knowledge needs, as well as a fourth option, which was a free text box (qualitative data). The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistical analyses and a grounded theory approach, respectively.

Analysis of the quantitative data indicates that NPOs ' needs are comparable in both countries. Analysis of qualitative data identified five major categories and multiple sub-categories representing the types of knowledge needs of NPOs. Major categories are knowledge about management and organizational practices, knowledge about resources, community knowledge, sectoral knowledge and situated knowledge. The paper discusses the results using semantic proximity and presents an emergent, evidence-based knowledge management (KM)-NPO model.

The findings contribute to the growing body of literature in the KM domain, and in the understudied research domain related to the knowledge needs and experiences of NPOs. NPOs will find the identified categories and sub-categories useful to undertake KM initiatives within their individual organizations. The study is also unique, as it includes data from two countries, Canada and Australia.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) recently proposed a global consulting credential involving a diverse set of professions including accountancy, business law, and information technology. The proposal was widely debated in the professional literature, and was a divisive issue among CPAs. In late 2001, the AICPA membership voted against any further commitment to the credential. The purpose of this paper is to examine the global credential initiative in an effort to understand why professional jurisdictional claims may fail at the theorization stage.

The paper relies primarily on a qualitative review and analysis of archival materials and published articles and commentaries relating to the global credential project.

The analysis indicates that the AICPA failed to establish either the pragmatic or moral legitimacy of the proposed credential in the eyes of the audiences. This failure appears to be attributable to the sociopolitical environment in which the credential was promoted, and to flaws in the rhetoric used by the AICPA to articulate its jurisdictional claim.

The paper demonstrates the importance of legitimacy to the ability to successfully theorize institutional changes.

This paper investigates how the AICPA theorized the global credential knowledge claim, and how theorization failed to persuade the audiences to support the credential.

In this study, the authors unpack the micro-level processes of knowledge accumulation (experiential learning) and knowledge application (problem solving) to examine how task allocation structures influence organizational learning. The authors draw on untapped potential of the classical garbage can model (GCM), and extend it to analyze how restrictions on project participation influence differentiation and integration of organizational members’ knowledge and consequently organizational efficiency in solving the diverse, changing problems from an uncertain task environment. To isolate the effects of problem or knowledge diversity and experiential learning, the authors designed three simulation experiments to identify the most efficient task allocation structure in conditions of (1) knowledge homogeneity, (2) knowledge heterogeneity, and (3) experiential learning. The authors find that free project participation is superior when the members’ knowledge and the problems they solve are homogenous. When problems and knowledge are heterogeneous, the design requirement is on matching specialists to problem types. Finally, the authors found that experiential learning creates a dynamic problem where the double duty of adapting the members’ specialization and matching the specialists to problem types is best solved by a hierarchic structure (if problems are challenging). Underlying the efficiency of the hierarchical structure is an adaptive role of specialized members in organizational learning and problem solving: their narrow but deep knowledge helps the organization to adapt the knowledge of its members while efficiently dealing with the problems at hand. This happens because highly specialized members reduce the necessary scope of knowledge and learning for other members during a certain period of time. And this makes it easier for the generalists and for the organization as a whole, to adapt to unforeseen shifts in knowledge demand because they need to learn less. From this nuanced perspective, differentiation and integration may have a complementary, rather than contradictory, relation under environmental uncertainty and problem diversity.