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1 – 10 of 19The purpose of this paper is to define co-exploitation, co-exploration, and alliance ambidexterity from the perspective of organizational learning; to analyze how knowledge bases…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to define co-exploitation, co-exploration, and alliance ambidexterity from the perspective of organizational learning; to analyze how knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms of R&D alliances influence co-exploitation and co-exploration; and to discuss how to achieve alliance ambidexterity by managing paradoxes around knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper focussing on how to balance exploitation and exploration at the alliance level through managing three paradoxes of cooperation: similarity vs complementarity, integration vs modularity, and contracts vs trust.
Findings
While technological similarity, structural integration, and contracts are more likely to promote co-exploitation, technological complementarity, structural modularity, and trust are more likely to facilitate co-exploration. Alliance ambidexterity, which is beneficial for alliance performance, derives from either the combination of technological complementarity, structural integration, and contracts, or the combination of technological similarity, structural modularity, and trust temporally.
Research limitations/implications
Researchers should analyze the possibility of building alliance ambidexterity in other types of interorganizational relationships, and find other possible antecedents of interorganizational learning.
Practical implications
Managers should not simply treat R&D alliances as one of exploratory interorganizational relationships, but pay equal attention to co-exploitation and co-exploration. To achieve this balance, practitioners should combine technological complementarity with structural integration and contracts, or integrate technological similarity with structural modularity and trust.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the first contributions that analyze how an R&D alliance could gain its ambidexterity through the management of nested cooperation paradoxes.
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Miguel Solís-Molina, Miguel Hernández-Espallardo and Augusto Rodríguez-Orejuela
This study aims to investigate how contractual vs. informal governance influences the performance of collaborative innovation projects considering their exploitation vs…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how contractual vs. informal governance influences the performance of collaborative innovation projects considering their exploitation vs. exploration character.
Design/methodology/approach
Data are collected from a sample of 218 companies that have developed innovative projects in collaboration with other organizations. Regression models are estimated to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results indicate that contractual governance is the most effective for co-exploitation projects compared to informal governance. Specialization in either contractual or informal governance is more effective for co-exploration projects.
Practical implications
Developing collaborative innovation projects with other organizations is an alternative for firms to innovate either by exploiting complementary assets or by exploring new opportunities. Thus, the success of the collaborative innovation project is significantly affected by the way the collaboration is governed. On the one hand, for co-exploitation projects, companies should rely on contracts to improve their performance. On the other hand, for co-exploration projects, governance may specialize in either contracts or informal mechanisms to reach higher performance.
Originality/value
Despite previous studies analyzing the effect of contractual or informal governance on the performance of collaborative innovation projects, no research has focused on comparing simultaneously these effects, by using the innovation character of the project of co-exploitation or co-exploration as a moderator. Therefore, this paper explores comparatively the most effective type of governance mechanism for co-exploitation and co-exploration projects.
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Miguel Solís-Molina, Miguel Hernández-Espallardo and Augusto Rodríguez-Orejuela
This study aims to analyze the moderating role of a firm’s alliance learning capability. The aim is to investigate the comparative performance of developing exploitation (or…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the moderating role of a firm’s alliance learning capability. The aim is to investigate the comparative performance of developing exploitation (or exploration) activities in collaboration with others vs adopting a go-it-alone posture.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors compare high levels of co-exploitation (or co-exploration) that represent the collaboration stance vs low levels of co-exploitation (or co-exploration) that characterize the go-it-alone posture. Data were collected using a sample of 262 manufacturing firms that developed exploitation-based innovations and 239 exploration-based innovations. Regression models were used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
Empirical results suggest that the best performance is reached by firms that exploit or explore collaborating with others at high levels of alliance learning capability. In contrast, firms perform better by going alone in exploitation activities at low levels of alliance learning capability.
Practical implications
Firms may complement internal efforts of exploitation or exploration by co-developing knowledge with other organizations for higher performance. However, collaborating with others is not free of drawbacks, and, under certain circumstances, the go-it-alone strategy is more convenient.
Originality/value
This paper provides evidence of the role of a firm’s alliance learning capability in determining the differential performance of carrying on exploitation or exploration activities in collaboration with others vs adopting a go-it-alone stance. Thus, it offers an alternative perspective in the literature on organizational learning and innovation management, in contrast with the exploitation and exploration balanced perspective of ambidexterity, by explaining how alliance learning capability fosters firm performance combining exploitation or exploration at organizational and inter-organizational levels.
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Juan Cepeda and José Arias-Pérez
Currently, it is commonly accepted that information technology capabilities (ITC) positively influence organizational agility. Nevertheless, studies have recently started to…
Abstract
Purpose
Currently, it is commonly accepted that information technology capabilities (ITC) positively influence organizational agility. Nevertheless, studies have recently started to demonstrate that different organizational factors mediate this relation under the controvertible assumption that companies are capable of responding quickly to market changes using their IT in combination with other internal resources. Therefore, companies have given very little attention to collaborative work with external partners. The purpose of this study is to analyze the mediating effects of the acquisition and exploitation capabilities of open innovation on the information technology capabilities – organizational agility relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model with survey data from a multinational corporation that operates in South American emerging economies in the pension and savings businesses.
Findings
This study found that only the open innovation capability of exploitation has a partial mediating effect. This means that this organizational ability serves as a bridge so that IT capabilities can have a positive incidence on organizational agility.
Originality/value
This paper adopts a more novel study focus that emphasizes the importance of collaborative work and of the use of external resources that are implicit in open innovation capability. On the other hand, this organizational ability implies external embeddedness, which is usually approached mainly from the network theory in the international business literature; however, this study offers a more interesting study focus in which externally oriented organizational abilities such as open innovation are more important for external embeddedness than are the size and quality of the external network.
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The literature on interfirm networks devotes scant attention to the ways collaborating firms combine and integrate the knowledge they share and to the subsequent learning…
Abstract
Purpose
The literature on interfirm networks devotes scant attention to the ways collaborating firms combine and integrate the knowledge they share and to the subsequent learning outcomes. This study aims to investigate how motorsport companies use network ties to share and recombine knowledge and the learning that occurs both at the organizational and dyadic network levels.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a qualitative and inductive approach with the aim of developing theory from an in‐depth examination of the dyadic ties between motorsport companies and the way they share and recombine knowledge.
Findings
The research shows that motorsport companies having substantial competences at managing knowledge flows do so by getting advantage of bridging ties. While bridging ties allow motorsport companies to reach distant and diverse sources of knowledge, their strengthening and the formation of relational capital facilitate the mediation and overlapping of that knowledge.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis rests on a qualitative account in a single industry and does not take into account different types of inter‐firm networks (e.g. alliances; constellations; consortia etc.) and governance structures. Cross‐industry analyses may provide a more fine‐grained picture of the practices used to recombine knowledge and the ideal composition of inter‐firm ties.
Practical implications
This study provides some interesting implications for scholars and managers concerned with the management of innovation activities at the interfirm level. From a managerial point of view, the recognition of the different roles played by network spanning connections is particularly salient and raises issues concerning the effective design and management of interfirm ties.
Originality/value
Although much of the literature emphasizes the role of bridging ties in connecting to diverse pools of knowledge, this paper goes one step further and investigates in more depth how firms gather and combine distant and heterogeneous sources of knowledge through the use of strengthened bridging ties and a micro‐context conducive to high quality relationships.
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This study aims to propose a new research agenda for the theories of “organizational learning” and the “learning organization” in relation to the public sector. The research…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to propose a new research agenda for the theories of “organizational learning” and the “learning organization” in relation to the public sector. The research agenda can be used by researchers to make explicit accounts of how and where the results from their studies advance the current state-of-the-art in the intersection between public sector and organizational learning and/or the learning organization.
Design/methodology/approach
A combined systematic and bibliometric review methodology is applied based on the research that has been published in the past three decades.
Findings
Through an analysis of 238 journal publications obtained from the Scopus database, the authors determine the leading authors, countries, highly cited papers and take the stock of current literature. Similarly, by analyzing papers published between 2010 and 2020, the authors identify current tendencies and emerging themes of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector and offer avenues for future research.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is potentially the first, fully refereed study published reporting on a bibliometric and a systematic review of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector.
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Harry Sminia, Anup Nair, Aylin Ates, Steve Paton and Marisa Smith
This chapter addresses the dynamics in inter-organizational relations. The authors probe the value networks so prevalent within contemporary manufacturing to put forward that…
Abstract
This chapter addresses the dynamics in inter-organizational relations. The authors probe the value networks so prevalent within contemporary manufacturing to put forward that their basic cooperation/competition duality manifests itself in practical terms as capability, appropriation, and governance paradoxes. The authors conducted a longitudinal ethnographic study aimed at capturing the process by which inter-organizational collaboration in manufacturing value networks is enacted. Our study finds that inter-organizational relations are “nested” in that a relationship plays out over an interpersonal network where the inter-organizational relationships are a framework for action, while simultaneously interpersonal interactions affect how the inter-organizational relationships take shape and evolve. Furthermore, we found that inter-organizational dynamics is essentially a stratified process. Solving particular and concrete problems at the surface level, with regard to specific collaboration issues between organizations, simultaneously shapes truces with regard to the underlying capability, appropriation, and governance paradoxes.
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Ace Beorchia and T. Russell Crook
Research involving interorganizational relationships (IORs) has grown at an impressive rate. Several datasets have been used to understand the nature and performance implications…
Abstract
Research involving interorganizational relationships (IORs) has grown at an impressive rate. Several datasets have been used to understand the nature and performance implications of these relationships. Given the importance of such relationships, we describe a relatively new dataset, Bloomberg SPLC, which contains data regarding the percentage of costs and revenues attributed to suppliers and customers, as well as allows researchers to construct a comprehensive dataset of IORs of buyer–supplier networks. Because of this, Bloomberg SPLC data can be used to uncover new and exciting theoretical and empirical implications. This chapter provides background information about this dataset, guidance on how it can be leveraged, and new theoretical terrain that can be charted to better understand IORs.
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Christopher G. Worley and Philip H. Mirvis
This chapter examines the case studies in this volume with a focus on concepts and methods used in the study of multi-organization networks and partnerships, motivations to join…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter examines the case studies in this volume with a focus on concepts and methods used in the study of multi-organization networks and partnerships, motivations to join in multi-party collaboration, how multi-organization collaborations organized and managed, what kinds of value are created by collaborations, and the role of leadership therein.
Design/methodology/approach
A comparative look at four vertical networks (in health care and education); two “issue” networks/partnerships (sustainable seafood and water use); and the roles of government in collaboration in horizontal, vertical, and issue-based arrangements.
Findings
The chapter describes “lessons” learned about building both sustainability and collaborative capabilities in and across partnering organizations and about improving partnership structures, processes, and results.
Originality/value
The chapter sums and synthesizes the volume’s contributions.
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