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The purpose of this study is to deepen understanding of the effects of using social media technologies to acquire technological knowledge and organizational learning competences, of technological knowledge competences on organizational learning and finally of organizational learning on organizational performance.

The study was performed by analyzing data from a sample of 197 technology firms located in Spain. The hypotheses were tested using a structural equations model with the program LISREL 8.80.

This study’s conceptual framework is grounded in complexity theory – along with dynamic capabilities theory, which complements the resource-based view. The study contributes to the literature by proposing a model that reflects empirically how business ecosystems that use social media technologies enable the development of interorganizational and social collaboration networks that encourage learning and development of technological knowledge competences.

It would be interesting for future studies to consider other elements to conceptualize and measure social media technologies, including (among others) significance of the various tools used and strategic integration. The model might also analyze other sectors and another combination of variables.

The results of this study have several managerial implications: developing social media technologies and interorganizational social collaboration networks not only enables the organizational learning process but also encourages technological knowledge competences. Through innovation processes, use of social media technologies also contributes to strengthening companies’ strategic positioning, which ultimately helps to improve firms’ organizational performance.

Since social media technologies drive information systems in contemporary society (because they enable interaction with numerous agents), the authors highlight the use of complexity theory to develop a conceptual framework.

The study also deepens understanding of the connections by which new experiential learning contributes to the generation of coevolutionary adaptive business ecosystems and digital strategies that enable development of interorganizational and social collaborative networks through technological knowledge competences. Only after examining the impact of social media technologies on organizational performance in prior literature, did the authors underscore that both quantity and frequency of social media technology use are positively related to improvement in knowledge processes that lead to employees’ creation and acquisition of new metaknowledge.

This paper aims to clarify how organizations manage their participation in networks to share and jointly create knowledge but also risk unwanted knowledge spillovers at the same time. As formal governance, trust and observation are less applicable in informal networks, the authors need to understand how members address the need to protect knowledge by informal practices. The study aims to investigate how the application of knowledge protection practices affects knowledge sharing in networks. The insights are relevant for organizational and network management to control knowledge risks but harvest the benefits of network engagement.

The authors opted for an exploratory study based on 60 semi-structured interviews with members of 10 networks. In two rounds, network managers, representatives and members of the networks were interviewed. The second round of interviews was used to validate the intermediate findings. The data were complemented by documentary analysis, including network descriptions.

Through analyzing and building on the theory of psychological contracts, two informal practices of knowledge protection were found in networks of organizations: exclude crucial topics and share on selected topics and exclude details and share a selected level of detail. The authors explored how these two practices are enacted in networks of organizations with psychological contracts.

Counter to intuition that the protection of knowledge can be strengthened only at the expense of knowledge sharing and vice versa, networks benefitted from more focused and increased knowledge sharing while reducing the risk of losing competitive knowledge by performing these knowledge protection practices.

This paper aims to recall the attention on a key challenge for customer relationship management related to the role of human agents in the management of the “switch point” for ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency in a customer-machine conversation.

This study contributes to the discussion about the firms’ approach to artificial intelligence (AI) in frontline interactions under the conceptual umbrella provided by knowledge management studies.

This paper provides a theoretical model for clarifying the role of human intelligence (HI) in AI-based frontline interactions by highlighting the relevance of the actors’ subjectivity in the dynamics and perceptions of customer-machine conversations.

An AI-HI complementarity matrix is proposed in spite of the still dominant replacement view.

We address the following research questions: (1) Is the innovation trajectory of the acquirer affected by previous acquisitions? (2) In which direction knowledge recombination from the acquisition is pushed further? (3) Is the technological acquisition more a means for knowledge exploration and radical innovation or, on the contrary, a way for consolidating previous technological specialization?

The nature of this study is exploratory; therefore, we opted for an inductive approach based on the L'Oréal case study analysis. Data were triangulated from different sources: (a) the L'Oréal website and press releases collected in the 2009–2015 period; (b) journal articles and books on the global cosmetics industry and the insightful work of Jones (2010); (c) the Questel Orbit database containing data on patents; and (d) the Zephyr – Bureau van Dijk database containing information on the acquisitions of firms.

Empirical evidence from a patent data analysis reveals a paradoxical path. On the one hand, acquisitions enable the company to explore new technological spaces; on the other hand, they allow it to reinforce a preexisting technological trajectory, even when the knowledge base of the target is distant from that of the acquirer. Thus, in our case study, the absorption and recombination of knowledge from a variety of domains support specialization more than diversification technology strategies.

We add to innovation management literature a new perspective, by offering a detailed analysis, through patent data, of the knowledge recombination process, led by technological acquisitions.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on how perspectives and assumptions embedded in the complexity paradigm contribute to make logistics management research better aligned with real-life logistics. This is necessary, due to increasing supply chain complexity caused by an increasing request for sustainable development (SD).

The research is exploratory and based on a narrative literature review of logistics and supply chain management (SCM) from a complexity science perspective. Qualitative research interviews have been conducted with 12 logistics and supply chain managers in international companies and have focussed on their daily experiences and the underlying assumptions related to their actual work.

Logistics and SCM research is embedded in the functionalistic paradigm with reductionistic assumptions as the dominant logic. These do not sufficiently align with the complexity related, for example, to the daily work of SD in logistics management practice.

It is proposed that the inclusion of complexity-based assumptions in logistics management research can increase realism in the advancement of the discipline. A key result is that the recognition of logistics as complex means inclusion of human and social aspects – which is apparent in any logistics process or phenomenon – in logistics knowledge creation processes.

Increased realism in logistics management research by addressing complexity, instead of merely reducing it, will provide logistics and supply chain managers with increased understanding and appropriate knowledge when they deal with emerging challenges such as SD.

Based on Boulding’s levels of complexity, this paper challenges the underlying assumptions of logistics management in research and practice, and provides reflective frameworks for advancing the discipline and aligning it to the complexity of contemporary challenges in logistics management.

This paper aims to test the influence of external information search (EIS) on knowledge elaboration and group cognitive complexity (GCC) under the moderating effect of absorptive capacity (AC is indicated by prior knowledge base and gender diversity).

The results of three studies (one field study and two experimental studies) are reported. The first study tests the interaction between EIS and the two dimensions of AC on group knowledge elaboration in a sample of 65 organizational groups. In the second study, EIS was directly manipulated and the interaction with AC in a sample of 65 groups was tested. In the last experimental study, the AC of the boundary spanner (highest level of expertise versus lowest level of expertise) was manipulated and the effects of EIS in a sample of 37 groups were tested.

The first study reveals a significant interaction between EIS and prior knowledge base on knowledge elaboration and points toward a compensatory interplay of EIS and AC on GCC. The results of the second study indicate that EIS increases the time spent on task, as well as the efficiency of knowledge integration (GCC per unit of time). Furthermore, EIS has the strongest positive effect on GCC in groups in which at least one of the AC dimensions is average or high. The results of the last study show that the AC of the boundary spanner compensates for the lack of absorptive capacity of the group and also show that the cognitive distance between the boundary spanner and the rest of the group has a negative influence on the efficiency of knowledge integration in groups.

The limitations of Study 1, common to non-experimental research (related to causality), are dealt with in the second and third studies that establish causality between EIS and GCC.

The paper has important implications for the management of information search effort in organizational groups, in particular the groups are advised to: engage in EIS to increase their cognitive repertoire and cognitive complexity, delegate, when possible, their most competent members to engage in boundary spanning activities as they will maximize the cognitive benefits of EIS and finally minimize the cognitive dissimilarity between the boundary spanner and the rest of the group to facilitate the effective integration of novel insights into the group cognition.

This study is among the first empirical attempts to uncover the causal effect of EIS on knowledge elaboration and GCC in groups and to uncover the role of the boundary spanner in the EIS efforts.

This paper introduces a monopolistic competition model containing retail investors with imperfect knowledge and issuers offering complex structured products. The model, for which we provide empirical evidences supporting the issuer’s profiteering by increasing the product complexity, can explain that knowledge asymmetry is the key for the issuer to offer complex product and to enjoy the higher excess profit, thus worsening allocative efficiency. Our empirical analysis reports monotonically increasing mark-up premia, and J-shaped issue amounts with respect to complexity: the former result could be explained in a rational framework considering issuer costs, however, the latter is not the case. Our model proves the empirical results are well explained when knowledge asymmetry between issuer and investors is a strictly increasing convex function of complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and characterize knowledge integration approaches for integrating external knowledge of suppliers into new product development projects.

This paper is based on a multiple, in-depth case study of six product development projects at three knowledge-intensive manufacturing firms.

Firms make purposeful choices to devise knowledge integration approaches when working in collaborative buyer – supplier projects. The knowledge characteristics of the supplier input guide the choice of either coupling knowledge sharing and combining across firms or decoupling knowledge sharing (across firms) and knowledge combining (within firms).

This study relies on a limited number of case studies and considers only one supplier relationship in each project. Further studies could examine the challenge of knowledge integration in buyer – supplier relationships in different contexts, i.e. in relation to innovation complexity and uncertainty.

Managers need to make choices when designing knowledge integration approaches in collaborative product development projects. The use of coupled and decoupled approaches can help balance requirements in terms of joint problem-solving across firms, the efficiency of knowledge integration and the risks of knowledge leakage.

The conceptualization of knowledge integration as knowledge sharing and knowledge combining extends existing perspectives on knowledge integration as either a transfer of knowledge or as revealing the presence of pertinent knowledge without entirely transmitting it. The findings point to the complexity of knowledge integration as a process influenced by knowledge characteristics, perspectives on knowledge, openness of firm boundaries and elements of knowledge sharing and combining.

The purpose of this research is to systematically review the properties of supply chains demonstrating that they are complex systems, and that the management of supply chains is best achieved by steering rather than controlling these systems toward desired outcomes.

The research study was designed as both exploratory and explanatory. Data were collected from secondary sources using a comprehensive literature review process. In parallel with data collection, data were analyzed and synthesized.

The main finding is the introduction of an inductive framework for steering supply chains from a complex systems perspective by explaining why supply chains have properties of complex systems and how to deal with their complexity while steering them toward desired outcomes. Complexity properties are summarized in four inter-dependent categories: Structural, Dynamic, Behavioral and Decision making, which together enable the assessment of supply chains as complex systems. Furthermore, five mechanisms emerged for dealing with the complexity of supply chains: classification, modeling, measurement, relational analysis and handling.

Recognizing that supply chains are complex systems allows for a better grasp of the effect of positive feedback on change and transformation, and also interactions leading to dynamic equilibria, nonlinearity and the role of inter-organizational learning, as well as emerging capabilities, and existing trade-offs and paradoxical tensions in decision-making. It recognizes changing dynamics and the co-evolution of supply chain phenomena in different scales and contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect and offer insights on how to justify the use of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a research method for understanding the complexity of organizational phenomena, by applying the principles of the neo-configurational approach.

We present and critically examine three arguments regarding the use of QCA for management research. First, they discuss the need to assume configurational theories to build and empirically test a causal model of interest. Second, we explain how the three principles of causal complexity are assumed during the process of conducting QCA-based studies. Third, we elaborate on the importance of case knowledge when selecting the data for the analysis and when interpreting the results.

We argue that it is important to reflect on these arguments to have an appropriate research design. In the true spirit of the configurational approach, we contend that the three arguments presented are necessary; however, each argument is insufficient to warrant a QCA research design.

This paper contributes to management research by offering key arguments on how to justify the use of QCA-based studies in future research endeavors.