Search results

The purpose of this paper is to structure existing research on knowledge management (KM) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to offer a comprehensive overview of research strands and topics in KM in SMEs to determine their evolution over time.

The paper, which is considered a follow-up literature review, is based on a systematic literature review that covers 180 scientific papers that were published since the review paper by Durst and Edvardsson in 2012 that covered 36 papers.

The findings of this review and those of the aforementioned review are brought together in the form of an overview that structures research on KM in SMEs based on themes that, in turn, allow the derivation of promising research directions and research questions aimed at structuring future research on KM in SMEs.

By combining the findings of this review with the findings from the review published in this journal in 2012, this paper offers, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the most comprehensive literature review on KM in SMEs produced to date.

Strategic flexibility (SF) has become increasingly important for firms because of the fast changes in the external environment. In line with the practical importance of SF, an emerging research field has developed around it that has attempted to understand the nature of SF and the key relationships. The aim of this study is to unveil the semantic structure of the recent literature on SF and to suggest new promising areas for future research.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review with a bibliographic analysis technique, which allows authors to identify the main recent streams in the literature, as well as offer reflections and suggestions for future research.

The authors uncover three main emerging areas in the research on SF, namely SF as a dynamic capability, the role of knowledge management for SF and the relationship between a firm SF and the external environment. The authors put forward three avenues for future research on SF: Avenue 1. SF, business model innovation (BMI) and other dynamic capabilities (DC), Avenue 2. Digital technologies and SF/organizational agility and Avenue 3. SF and sustainability. Articles included in the special issue entitled “A strategic perspective on flexibility, agility and adaptability in the digital era” contribute to Avenue 2, thus paving the way for filling some of the identified gaps regarding the relationship between SF and digitalization.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on SF that uses a bibliometric approach to draw conclusions on the findings in the literature. The review contributes to the theoretical understanding of SF by illustrating and explicating core topics that have persisted over time, as well as by presenting three main avenues for further developing authors’ knowledge around SF.

This study aims to explore the innovative strategies of business model of the free-to-fee switch, the relationship between the business model innovation and customer knowledge and further develop a conceptual model.

This study adopts a multiple case study method with abductive research logic, following the replication logic to select samples. A total of eight outstanding companies with altogether 312 free-to-fee switch events were selected from 1998 to 2021.

A strategic matrix with four innovative business models for the free-to-fee switch is generated. The parallelism between the models and customer knowledge orientations is also found. Further, the study develops the conceptual model regarding customer knowledge orientation as a key mediation.

The study highlights the conceptualization definition of customer knowledge orientation and its mediation effect to the business model innovation of free-to-fee switch, which is a new issue compared with previous research. Furthermore, it reveals that there exists organizational ambidexterity, which brings a new definition of customer knowledge orientation.

This study suggests how to integrate customer knowledge orientations to support the marketing process of the business model of free-to-fee switch. It also proposes a specific mechanism to conduct the free-to-fee switch with the introduction of four innovative strategic models and eight evolutional paths.

This study creatively proposes the strategic matrix and the conceptual model of business model innovation of free-to-fee switch. Moreover, a new conceptual definition of customer knowledge orientation is specified.

This paper aims to analyze unexplored connections between economic, environmental and social dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and knowledge management (KM) strategies (exploration, exploitation), also considering environmental dynamism as an influencing variable on these connections. The predicted CSR-KM interplay suggests, from stakeholder and knowledge-based views of the firm, the existence of ideal configurations between CSR and KM strategies that generate differentiated impacts on companies’ innovation capabilities, especially in dynamic environments.

Structural equation modeling by means of the partial least squares technique was used to test the study’s hypotheses after collecting survey data from Spanish companies of the renewable energy sector.

The study findings show that in highly dynamic environments, companies will tend to commit prominently in CSR, although their orientation (economic, environmental, social) and effects on innovation capabilities will depend mainly on the selected KM strategies. Social and environmental CSR are found to be highly related to KM exploration, whereas economic CSR is highly related to KM exploitation. Nevertheless, while a significant indirect effect of economic CSR by means of the KM exploitation strategy on innovation capabilities is found, the proposed indirect effect of both environmental and social CSR through the KM exploration strategy on innovation capabilities is not significant.

The results suggest that company managers should be aware of the advantages of following specific paths of investment in KM and CSR initiatives in highly dynamic environments, as there is a potential payoff in terms of innovation capability improvement. The results also suggest that “good” relationships with stakeholders, built from specific CSR investments, make firms able to get valuable knowledge that it is useful to develop KM strategies for innovation capability development.

Previous studies do not consider the interplay between KM strategies and CSR as a catalyzer for developing a firm’s innovation capabilities. This paper contributes to the KM and innovation literatures by introducing CSR into the conversation about how to improve innovation capabilities in dynamic and sustainable industries by using configurations of KM strategies and specific CSR investments in economic, social and environmental areas.

The adoption of knowledge management (KM) to steer new skills and capabilities among people provides evidence that KM not only offers competitive advantages but also provides a means for organisational survival, by improvising core capabilities or generate new ones that can drive people in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era. This paperaim to identify critical new skills and capabilities among people within an organisation to stay competitive, innovative and relevant.

The paper presents the findings on new skills assessment for Fourth Industrial Revolution. The study was carried out through an interview with a focus group discussion technique to gather data on the role of KM in creating new set of skills or capabilities in Fourth Industrial Revolution’s landscape. The study also reports a bibliographic study of critical skills based on more than a decade of related academic and industry publications to portray research trends and future directions.

There is a demand in “must-have” skills related to Industry 4.0 such as capability for complex decision-making, complex problem-solving, collaborative innovation, project management, creativity and critical thinking, social skill and social responsibility. While these skills are critical enablers to aiding individuals in the scenarios of plausible 4IR futures, several important new research trends that emerge have also not been adequately explored including KM and Industry 4.0 skill gap, skill evolution, machine knowledge, intuitive decision-making, rational decision-making, technostress, digital fluency, collaborative innovation, industrial policies, human–machine interaction and societal systems.

This research provides a roadmap for the next research trends and topics in the area of Fourth Industrial Revolution and new skills requirements. The study discusses some of the essential issues and challenges with upskilling required for Industry 4.0. It also focuses on how upskilling learning initiatives influence new knowledge creation. This primarily contributes to the educational field in deciding how and when to adopt appropriate strategies and identify which initiatives to best meet the needs of its community.

KM enables individuals to utilise their existing core capabilities or generate new ones for immediate investment in upskilling to meet current and future skills needs required by an organisation. Simply put, KM will improve the organisation’s talent-driven learning strategy and increase individuals’ ability to learn faster and attain sustainable competitive advantage in a fast-paced ever changing environment.

This paper is useful to academics, practitioners and policymakers in the fields of KM. The research provides initial insight into new skills mapping in the context of Fourth Industrial Revolution and the needs for researchers to understand the recent research trends in KM.

This study aims to examine the potential effect that business ethics (BE) in general and corporate social responsibility (CSR) more specifically can exert on the voluntary disclosure (VD) of intellectual capital (IC) for the ethically most engaged firms in the world.

The research design is based on an inductive approach. As part of the global quantitative investigation, the authors have analyzed the impact of BE and CSR on the transparent communication of the IC. The data under analysis have been investigated using multiple linear regression.

Based on a sample of 83 enterprises emerging as the most ethical companies in the world, the results have revealed that the adoption of ethical and socially responsible approach is positively associated with the extent of VD about IC. This finding may help attenuating the asymmetry of information and the conflict of interest potentially arising with corporate partners. Hence, IC-VD may stand as an evidence of ethical and socially responsible behaviors.

Global and national regulators and policymakers can be involved by these results when setting social reporting standards because they suggest that institutional and/or cultural factors affect top management's social reporting behavior in the publication of the IC information.

Direct and indirect stakeholders, if supported by ethical and socially responsible behaviors of the company, could assess more in detail the quality of the disclosed information concerning the IC.

Most of the studies that have been conducted in this field have examined the effect of BE and CSR on the firm's overall transparency, neglecting their potential effect on IC disclosure. This study is designed to fill in this gap through testing the impact of ethical and socially responsible approaches specifically on IC-VD.

This paper aims to analyze factors based on organizational knowledge management (KM; transactional memory systems and knowledge-oriented leadership [K-OL]) that help firms to mitigate conflicts based on task management at work, with the aim to improve their innovation capabilities (IC). The knowledge-based view of the firm, conflict management theory and cognitive collective engagement theory have been used to build a model of relationships that connects the development of positive KM contexts and management of dysfunctional conflict with IC improvement.

Data survey collected from inland hotel establishments in Spain is used to test seven hypotheses by means of structural equations modeling, applying the partial least squares technique. Direct, indirect and mediating relationships between variables are examined from the structural path model.

The results confirm that, as expected, IC improve when K-OL and transactive memory systems (TMSs) are properly implemented by hotel establishments, which leads them to reduce negative effects of task management conflict (TMC). Significant direct effects are found between the key variables of the study and also a significant indirect effect between K-OL and IC through TMS reinforcement and the mitigation of TMC.

This paper provides useful ideas for hotel managers about how to improve KM contexts in their establishments while avoiding TMC. Efforts devoted to creating those contexts by hotel establishments are shown to be effective to improve their IC and create competitive advantages.

The analysis of IC improvement by studying TMC mitigation had not been researched to date by the KM literature. The consideration and testing of a model that integrates KM-related tools such as K-OL and TMS to avoid TMC in the hotel industry is the main contribution of this study.

Drawing on resource and capability theory, this study aimed to analyze the relationship between the dynamic capabilities (DC), the knowledge management (KM) process (KMP) and results in customers and people. More specifically, the study argues that the KM process mediates the relationship between DC and the results outlined above. In addition, a predictive analysis is carried out that demonstrates the relevance of the KM process in the model.

The study sample is made up of 118 Spanish organizations that have some kind of recognition of excellence awarded by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). Partial least squares methodology is used to validate the research model, the hypothesis testing and the predictive analysis.

The results show that organizations which leverage the DC through the KMP improve customer and people outcomes. Moreover, the predictive power is higher when the KMPmediates the relationship between the DC and the results.

There is no consensus in the literature on the relationship between DC, KM and performance. Moreover, there are also not enough papers that study KM or DC through the dimensions that define these constructs or variables. Given this need, this work considers the KMP according to the stages of knowledge creation, storage, transfer and application. Similarly, DC is dimensioned in sensing, learning, integrating and coordinating capabilities. These, as reconfigurators of knowledge assets, influence the KMP. Accordingly, the empirical model connects these knowledge domains and analyses their link to outcomes.