Search results

In consumer marketing literature, the ethical/moral components of consumer behavior have been recognized as important factors in individuals’ involvement in software piracy. However, there remains unanswered the question of which specific components are being referred to and how they explain consumer software piracy in the virtual knowledge-sharing community. This question is particularly unaddressed for those consumers who take the risks associated with piracy believing their acts to be taking from the haves (software producers) and giving to the have-nots. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this research, the authors propose a synergistic model that adopts the perspective of heroism and social exchange, and test it with the data collected from a virtual community. To test the proposed research model, the authors investigated 489 subjects and examined the hypotheses by applying the partial least squares method.

The findings show that the heroism construct has significant influence on sharing behavior in relation to cost factors, but not to benefit factors. Heroism stands out as the major construct in explaining sharing behavior. Thus, the research shows that the consumer software piracy present in the virtual knowledge-sharing community is a social behavior of exchange.

Methodologically, the study proposes a new model for researchers and practitioners to understand consumer software piracy in the virtual community. Managerially, software producers should take it into consideration when formulating their product-pricing strategy, to ensure that software producers and the young can both win in the “buy or steal” war.

While projects can generate highly relevant knowledge to inform operations and improve performance, organizations face the difficulty of retaining knowledge once a project ceases to exist. This study aims to examine how project work can lead to organizational learning and, in particular, how knowledge transfer and social learning practices shape project-to-organization learning in a setting where projects complement a traditional functional form of organization.

This case study examined a project for inclusive teacher training at a German university. Data were collected and analyzed following an ethnographic approach, including participatory observation, a focus group discussion and 14 interviews with project participants.

The findings support the idea that much of the learning that occurs within projects is tacit. In this study, tacit knowledge from the project was shared with the organization through social learning practices. These social learning practices had a larger impact on project-to-organization learning than knowledge transfer practices such as codification. Additionally, the findings suggest that when knowledge transfer and social learning practices are in conflict, project-to-organization learning will likely suffer.

This study contributes to existing literature by examining the relative importance of technical and social dimensions of project-to-organization learning and by focusing on universities as an example of organizations where projects operate alongside a traditional functional form. Practical implications suggest that to facilitate project-to-organization learning, universities may need to enact a combination of new practices, some designed to codify and transfer knowledge and others created to generate new interpretations and build common knowledge across organizational boundaries.

Firms across many industries use acquisitions as a vehicle for renewing their capabilities. Many such acquisitions fail to achieve their goals, mainly because of the trade-offs involved in managing the post-acquisition integration process. The acquisition integration process not only is an important phenomenon by itself but also offers a unique opportunity to gain insight into how firms transform their capabilities more generally. Recent strategic management literature has begun to recognize the importance of incorporating individual-level cognitive, motivational and behavioral mechanisms into firm-level explanations, although empirical studies within this vein have been scarce.

This longitudinal inductive study traces the process of capability transformation in an acquisition of a medium-size entrepreneurial firm by a larger corporation.

The authors found that capability transformation involved a continuous interplay of knowledge leveraging and interest alignment mechanisms, converging around a set of practices that were considered critical for the capability. Only after firms achieved an agreement about this set of practices that knowledge leveraging efforts translated into actual performance.

The study contributes to the literature on competitive advantage by developing a better link between the potential advantage derived from the availability of knowledge-based resources and the translation of this availability into actual firm performance. This study also advances knowledge on managing post-acquisition integration process by demonstrating which managerial skills and actions contribute to the integration capability.

The purpose of this paper is to study organizational learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences. According to March (2010), this kind of high intellect learning is difficult to accomplish because it requires deliberate investments in knowledge transfer and creation. Zollo and Winter (2002) emphasized how knowledge codification can facilitate this process, as long as it is “well-performed”. However, knowledge management scholars have yet to explore what is meant by well-performed codification and how to achieve it.

This paper addresses this gap and provides a conceptual analysis based on two related but previously disconnected research areas: organizational learning and knowledge management.

This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, a new understanding of different types of experiences and their effects on learning is proposed. Then the codification process using a critical realist paradigm to overcome the epistemological boundaries of knowledge versus knowing is discussed; in doing so, it is shown that codification can take different forms to be “well-performed”. Finally, appropriate codification strategies based on experience type are identified.

The abstraction-oriented codification outlined in this paper runs counter to the logic of concrete codification that dominates both theory and practice. Thus, going beyond the traditional debate on the degree of codification (i.e. should knowledge be fully codified or just partly codified), this paper introduced a new debate about the appropriate degree of abstraction.

The benefits associated with visibility in organizations depend on employees' willingness to engage with technologies that utilize visible communication and make communication visible to others. Without the participation of workers, enterprise social media have limited value. This study develops a framework to assess what deters and drives employees' use of enterprise social media.

Data were collected from 753 employees of a global company using an online survey. The response rate was 24.5%. The authors used structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized framework.

The results show that various fears by workers may deter or motivate enterprise social media use. This offers an alternative viewpoint for examining the consequences of communication visibility in organizations. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that the fear of accountability and the fear of losing uniqueness reduce enterprise social media use through increased codification efforts. The fear of missing out is directly and positively related to collecting behaviors on enterprise social media.

Expectations about participation in visible organizational communication environments are rising. However, as individuals may experience anxiety in such settings, the authors need to direct more analytical focus to the ways individuals manage communication visibility in organizing contexts and develop a deeper understanding of the consequences of fear in workplace communication.

The analysis recognizes that fear can play a key role in deterring or motivating workers' specific choices in navigating the challenges that occur when technology can make communication broadly visible. This study uses theorizing on communication visibility to bring together different fear mechanisms to predict enterprise social media use.

This paper seeks to present organizational learning processes of knowledge accumulation, articulation, codification and subsequent routine development in a marketing services organization where judgment and rules of thumb were more the norm than codified knowledge and explicit routines. The case illustrates how organizational learning through a conscious knowledge codification effort could lead to tangible benefits for consumer‐driven organizations and how heterogeneous and infrequent yet important routines can be aided by an explicit and dynamic learning process.

After a review of the relevant literature, a case is provided to illustrate many of the key concepts in the organizational learning literature as they are applied to a consumer package goods company.

The case study is followed by a discussion of how the organization in the case applied organizational learning processes through a knowledge clarification and codification system. The organizational learning process was enabled by contextual enablers such as leadership commitment to organizational learning, teamwork and organization‐wide participation in the knowledge articulation and codification processes, and multi‐lateral flow of information across the organization in developing the routines.

Implications of how companies in market‐oriented environments that often have nuanced practices and uncodified norms could utilize various organizational learning processes are discussed in the paper.

It is rare in the field of organizational learning to see the application of numerous learning theories in one place and one organization. Such was the case in this examination, where different roles played by different organizational components, such as support from leadership, teamwork and flexibility, organization‐wide participation, and multilateral communication, in addition to knowledge accumulation, articulation, codification, and circular learning loops were utililzed by the organization to produce marketplace success for a major consumer battery company with heterogeneous and nuanced yet important learning requirements.

The paper aims to clearly differentiate knowledge sharing (KS) and knowledge transfer (KT) besides exemplifying their interconnections to minimize the current confusions in the knowledge management (KM) literature.

An extensive literature review method was used to analyse relevant literature on both KS and KT to clearly delineate their differences and their interconnections.

The paper found that KS is a subset of KT (using personalization strategy), whereas KT as a whole is a broader concept, if compared with KS. However, KS is not one of the immediate processes involved in KT (using codification strategy). The processes involved in KS and KT differ according to the strategy used (in KT) and perspective chosen (in KS). Other findings include KS (unidirectional) as reflective concept (viewed so far), whereas KS (bidirectional), KT (personalization) and KT (codification) as formative concepts.

The findings of this paper were based on the review of selected relevant articles only.

The paper will minimize the current confusions in the KM literature and will assist future researches on both KS and KT to ensure what these concepts entail to avoid construct underrepresentation.

As compared to previous attempts, the present paper has shown the interconnections between KS and KT, as well as the differences based on the two perspectives of KS (unidirectional/bidirectional) and the two strategies of KT (personalization/codification), and such effort is new in the literature.

In practice, showing the community’s need for knowledge (e.g. listing requests for new articles) is used to drive knowledge sharing in Wikipedia. Yet, theoretical understanding of how it influences one’s knowledge sharing is still lacking. The aim of this study is to develop a model of the influence and show that one takes others’ utility into account (utility interdependence).

The proposed model was tested with data collected in a survey of 323 Wikipedia users.

Others’ knowledge need affects one’s perceived forgone benefit of free riding (i.e. a cost of knowledge sharing) and, thereby, increases the intention to share knowledge.

This study contributes to research by identifying utility interdependence in knowledge sharing. For practice, the findings provide empirical support for the general belief that showing others’ knowledge need is useful for promoting sharing.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of knowledge management (KM) strategies in developing the effect of intellectual capital (IC) on innovation for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, the current study explores how different interactions between IC and KM strategies lead to more powerful innovation in SMEs.

This study analyzes survey responses from 170 owners/managers of SMEs in Iran. The study uses partial least square structural equation modeling methods within Smart PLS software.

This study reveals that first IC has an excellent level of engagement with both incremental and radical types of innovation, but its engagement level with radical innovation is higher than that for incremental innovation. Second, the human capital component of IC has a direct positive impact on radical innovation although it has no significant impact on incremental innovation. Third, the personalization strategy of KM positively moderates the impact of human capital on both incremental and radical innovation.

This paper is an empirical attempt in SMEs to combine IC and KM strategies to strengthen innovation. It presents research community for SMEs of a developing country that has been investigated in a limited way compared to large firms of developed nations and provides valuable insights into further research.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model of knowledge transfer that takes into account both the perspective of the sender and the perspective of the receiver, with an emphasis on the latter. The contention is that, although externalizing knowledge residing in an individual or group and making it accessible to others either through direct communication or embedding information in the organizational system is a necessary component of knowledge transfer, it is not the only component. An equal, but understudied, share of the knowledge transfer effort takes place when the receiver of the knowledge engages with it, internalizing it and making it usable for the receiver as well.

The paper first defines knowledge from a pragmatic, organizational perspective. Second, it presents the model. Finally, it evaluates the current direction of knowledge transfer studies in light of the main tenets of the model.

Engagement of information is a necessary step before knowledge can be effectively transferred to a receiver. Engagement is defined as an act whereby the receiver of the information actively uses the information by applying it to specific tasks.

Companies should be aware that there is a tendency to under‐invest in engagement and over‐invest in embedding information.

The model differs from current models in that it proposes that in virtually no case is the interplay a zero sum game. In most cases, investing more in embedding information requires investing more in engaging the information.