Search results

Exploratory search activities are ubiquitous in various information systems. Much potentially useful or even serendipitous information is discovered during the exploratory search process. Given its irreplaceable role in information systems, exploratory search has attracted growing attention from the information system community. Since few studies have methodically reviewed current publications, researchers and practitioners are unable to take full advantage of existing achievements, which, in turn, limits their progress in this field. Through a literature review, this study aims to recapitulate important research topics of exploratory search in information systems, providing a research landscape of exploratory search.

Automatic and manual searches were performed on seven reputable databases to collect relevant literature published between January 2005 and July 2023. The literature pool contains 146 primary studies on exploratory search in information system research.

This study recapitulated five important topics of exploratory search, namely, conceptual frameworks, theoretical frameworks, influencing factors, design features and evaluation metrics. Moreover, this review revealed research gaps in current studies and proposed a knowledge framework and a research agenda for future studies.

This study has important implications for beginners to quickly get a snapshot of exploratory search studies, for researchers to re-align current research or discover new interesting issues, and for practitioners to design information systems that support exploratory search.

Partners' knowledge is an essential source of knowledge for organizations in the collaborative innovation. Exploratory innovation is an innovation strategy that is significant to the organization and is characterized by learning and absorbing new knowledge for new products and technology. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and to analyze further the moderating effect of previous competitive and collaborative relationships between organizations on the above relationships.

In this study, the patent data of 1,636 organizations in the nano-biopharmaceutical field collaboratively from 1998 to 2020 are used as a sample. The knowledge networks and collaboration networks are constructed through the patent data. A negative binomial regression method is used to conduct the empirical study.

The results indicate that partners' knowledge utilization has an inverted U-shaped effect on exploratory innovation. The competitive relationship steepens the inverted U-shape effect of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and makes the turning point to the left. The collaborative relationship steepens the inverted U-shape effect of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and makes the turning point to the right.

This study is the first to examine the impact of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and to explore the role of the competitive and collaborative relationships between organizations. It extends current research in organizational innovation and knowledge management by providing insight into partners' knowledge utilization.

The study aims to provide suggestions for project-based firms (PBFs) to create value through the development of social capital, collaborative environment and organisational learning (exploratory & exploitative learning). In this regard, a conceptual model is proposed that examines the interrelations between social capital, collaborative environment and exploratory & exploitative learning in the context of PBFs.

A semi-systematic literature review focussed on interrelations between social capital, exploratory & exploitative learning and collaborative environment was undertaken. Top ranked journals and highly relevant journal articles in the management domain were considered for the review. To analyse literature, the content analysis technique incorporating NVIVO 12 software was adopted.

Conceptual model suggests that social capital positively affects exploratory & exploitative learning through collaborative environment in PBFs. Three dimensions of social capital (network ties, trust and shared goals) create collaborative environment and collaborative environment enhances organisational learning in PBFs across different levels. Ultimately, social capital, collaborative environment and exploratory & exploitative learning contribute to value creation in PBFs.

Although the relationship between social capital and exploratory & exploitative learning has been researched previously, findings remain inconsistent. This study provides an alternative perspective to discuss this relationship with the proposed mediating construct: collaborative environment. Considering the context of PBFs, a conceptual model was developed to explain the interrelations between social capital, collaborative environment and learning. This study especially discusses collaborative environment as a value creation factor.

The purpose of this paper is to further understand the joint effect of project‐level exploratory and exploitative learning in new product development. It aims to examine the complicated relationships among exploratory learning, exploitative learning and new product performance at a single project level. In addition, it seeks to shed light on the contextual effects of a firm's market orientation on the relationship between joint occurrence of both learning activities and new product development performance.

The paper is based on a questionnaire survey/analysis of a sample of 298 projects from high‐tech firms in Taiwan.

The findings suggest that the joint occurrence of both learning activities has a positive effect on new product performance and depends upon a high level of one learning activity coupled with a small dose of the other. Drawing on cultural and behavioral perspectives of market orientation, the results also indicate that market orientation may enhance the joint effect of both learning activities on new product performance.

This paper offers insight to project managers with regard to the importance of rationally mixing with exploratory and exploitative learning during new product development. Furthermore, the study argues that market orientation is an alternative of organizational design that fosters the positive joint effect of both learning behaviors.

The results empirically support the theoretical argument that a high‐low matching of exploratory and exploitative learning can enhance performance at the level of a single project. The study provides a multiple‐level framework to understand how the firm‐level MO strengthens the positive effects of joint occurrence of project‐level exploratory and exploitative learning activities during new product development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate when and how people working in collaboration could be benefitted by an exploratory search task, specifically focussing on team size and its effect on the outcomes of such a task.

The paper investigates the effects of team sizes on exploratory search tasks using a lab study involving 68 participants – 12 individuals, ten dyads, and 12 triads. In order to assess various factors during their exploratory search sessions, an evaluation framework is synthesized using relevant literature. The framework consists of measures for five groups of quantities relevant to exploratory search: information exposure, information relevancy, information search, performance, and learning.

The analyses on the user study data using the proposed framework reveals that while individuals working alone cover more information than those working in teams, the teams (dyads and triads) are able to achieve better information coverage and search performance due to their collaborative strategies. In many of the measures, the triads are found to be even better than the dyads, demonstrating the value of adding a collaborator to a search process with multiple facets.

The findings shed light on not only how collaborative work could help in achieving better results in exploratory search, but also how team sizes affect specific aspects – information exposure, information relevancy, information search, performance, and learning – of exploratory search. This has implications for system designers, information managers, and educators.

The challenge of unforeseen uncertainties in exploratory projects requires the lead firm in a project alliance to effectively manage exploratory co-innovation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the types of capabilities a lead firm required in exploratory projects and how these capabilities enable the exploratory innovation of the project alliance.

A multiple-case study was done to provide empirical evidence for the rationale of the capabilities of the lead firm. The provided analysis used abductive reasoning of two typical exploratory projects in China.

This paper identifies two types of capabilities: innovation-related capabilities and network-related capabilities. Furthermore, a process model of the capabilities of the lead firm is developed that enables exploratory co-innovation in a project alliance. The capabilities of the lead firm input varied at four different stages.

Innovation-related capabilities and network-related capabilities could form the foundation for the lead firm in an exploratory project alliance. This will enable an exploratory co-innovation and collaboratively overcome the barriers of exploratory projects.

Although exploratory project attracts extensive attention for its unique characteristics and universal value, there is limited amount of research on the context of joint exploratory projects. This study starts from the role of lead firm in an exploratory project alliance, contributes toward the comprehension of the link between the lead firm’s capabilities and the process of exploratory co-innovation. The findings will be of value in supporting the management of exploratory innovation in a project alliance.

Past studies have paid extensive attention to investigate learning issues in individual, organizational and team contexts. Learning activities in the workplace, however, often occur in the interdisciplinary dyadic context. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to clarify what factors make interdisciplinary dyads lead to better learning effects. The authors attempted to clarify two major agendas: What knowledge factors (intellectual capitals) owned by the parties of the dyads can induce better learning effects? What contextual factors (learning tasks) can make better learning effects during the dyadic learning process?

To examine the previous agendas, the authors first conducted in-depth interviews and an exploratory survey so that a four-element dyadic intellectual capital (DIC) architecture was circumscribed: knowledge interdependency, expertise similarity, collaborative routines and mutual trust. Dyadic learning tasks were classified as exploitative and exploratory learning. The authors then sampled 248 respondents for the formal empirical survey to examine the relationship between DIC, dyadic learning tasks and knowledge sharing.

The statistical evidences confirmed the positive relationships between DIC and knowledge sharing, and the results also signified the previous relationships with a mediating effect from exploratory learning, while the effect of exploitative learning was not supported. Thus, only dyads (the two heads) with knowledge interdependency and mutual trust can make the exploratory task better than that of one individual (the one head).

This study provides a new insight into the learning issue with an interdisciplinary dyadic perspective to supplement the existing gap between academic efforts and learning practices in the workplace.

This paper aims to determine whether exploratory wine purchasing behaviour is affected by consumers’ objective and subjective wine knowledge.

A questionnaire was developed using recognised scales for exploratory consumer tendencies, objective and subjective wine knowledge. The survey was administered using the MTurk platform. A factor analysis was first used to test the psychometric properties of the measures of the three constructs. Once the robustness of the measures was ascertained, cross-tabulations and testing via ANOVA’s of the demographics of age, gender, weekly wine consumption and education on the constructs was undertaken. In addition the causal relationship of subjective and objective wine knowledge on exploratory purchase behaviour was investigated via the use of multiple regression analysis.

The results show that consumers with more real (objective) knowledge of wines are more likely to participate in exploratory wine purchasing. Objective wine knowledge is greatest amongst older consumers and those who consume more wine.

While attempts were made to limit biases due to the research approach, the results may lack generalisability because a US sample only, was used. Recommendations for future research extending the sample population as well as for changes to the question formats are suggested.

The findings of this study have implications for wine marketers in that marketing strategies and activities (labelling, distribution, media, etc.) may need to be adapted depending on the exploratory purchasing behaviour and wine knowledge of their target customers.

Exploratory wine acquisition behaviour is important to wine marketers. This behaviour encourages trial but, at the same time, impacts brand loyalty. This paper identifies the characteristics of consumers in terms of wine knowledge, consumption and demographics most likely to exhibit this behaviour and provides support for the need for marketers to identify these consumers and adapt their marketing activities targeting them.

This study aims to test the effects of Technology-related Divestitures (TRDs) on firms' exploratory innovation. The moderating effects of firms' internal and external resource coordination activities, resource buffering and bridging, are also explored.

A set of data including 1,372 Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2018 is adopted. Based on propensity score matching sample, random-effect Tobit models were employed to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results indicate that TRDs inhibit firms' exploratory innovation, while both resource buffering and bridging can mitigate this negative effect. This implies that to promote exploratory innovation, resource coordination activities are the essential.

The research findings can contribute to both the exploratory innovation and technological divestiture literature. The test on the moderating roles of resource buffering and bridging can also extend our understanding of the effect of TRDs on firms' exploratory innovation. Accordingly, several practical implications can be provided. This is especially important for strategic decisions of firms from emerging and developing countries, which often lack sufficient internal resources and strong technological capabilities to develop exploratory innovation.