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This study aims to explore the impact of organizational search (local and boundary-spanning search) on business model innovation (efficiency-centered/novelty-centered business model innovation) and the moderating role of knowledge inertia between them.

The relationships are examined through data provided by a sample of Chinese firms and by multiple hierarchical regressions.

Local search has a stronger effect on efficiency-centered business model innovation, whereas boundary-spanning search plays a stronger role in novelty-centered business model innovation. Knowledge inertia strengthens the effect of local search on efficiency-centered business model innovation but weakens the effect of boundary-spanning search on efficiency-centered business model innovation and the effect of local search on novelty-centered business model innovation.

The findings enable firms’ managers to understand the subtle ways in which organizational search interacts with knowledge inertia to affect business model innovation and may help them to make knowledge management efforts to harvest the full value of organizational search.

Previous studies have not examined the effect of different organizational search on different business model innovation from knowledge management perspective. With knowledge inertia as the moderator, the results reveal the contingent impact mechanism of organizational search on business model innovation, the findings provide fresh evidence that can bridge the gap between knowledge management and business model innovation.

Agenda for knowledge creation within inter-project alliances and inter-firm supply chain networks has been extensively debated. However, the existing knowledge networks within consultant-supplier interfaces in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry seem to be vague, loose, incidental and insignificant. This study examines factors affecting knowledge networking intention (KNI) within construction service supply chain (CSSC) networks.

Data analysis was conducted on a quantitative survey of 161 consulting professional service firms in Tanzania, employing stepwise regression modelling as the statistical technique.

The results indicate that three types of knowledge inertia (KI) exert varying effects on KNI. While both procedural (PI) and learning inertia (LI) negatively impact KNI, experience inertia (EI) has no impact on KNI. In addition, knowledge governance (KG) mechanisms are found to strongly strengthen and leverage the negative effects of PI and LI on KNI and the positive link between EI and KNI within outbound and heterogeneous CSSC actors, with formal KG having greater leverage than informal KG.

The study offers guidance on how managers of PBOs should strategically orchestrate knowledge governance mechanisms within CSSC networks to leverage KI behaviours.

Current literature on KNI, KI and KG within CSSC networks offers a limited understanding of how KI behaviours influence KNI of project-based organizations (PBOs) in tapping vibrant outbound peripheral knowledge. The research presents two major original contributions. First, the empirical evidence contributes to deepening the current understanding of how heterogeneous external knowledge within consultant-supplier interactions is negatively influenced by KI. Lastly, the study suggests formal and informal knowledge governance strategies for managers on how to counteract KI forces, thus extending the theoretical debate on KNI, KI and KG literature.

This paper aims to examine the antecedents of customer inertia (i.e. knowledge, confusion, perceptions of competitor similarity and switching costs) and their relationship to customer satisfaction, service providers’ switching intentions and actual switching behavior. Customer inertia is said to reduce the incidence of service provider switching; however, little is known about the antecedent drivers of inertia.

The conceptual model was tested by a longitudinal/discontinuous panel design using an online survey research of 1055 adult (i.e. +18 years old) subscribers to cell phone services. Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling was used to simultaneously estimate both the measurement and structural components of the model to determine the nature of the relationships between the variables.

Findings of the PLS structural model provide support for the direct relationship between customer inertia and its antecedents (i.e. knowledge, confusion, perceptions of competitor similarity and switching costs). The results show that customer inertia has a moderate negative effect on the intention to change service providers but had no measurable effect on the actual behavior of changing service providers, other than indirectly, by influencing the perception of difficulty in switching some 11 months later. Further results from an analysis of indirect pathways of the antecedents to inertia show that switching costs are the only variable which indirectly reduce intentions to change service providers. The results also show that the effect of satisfaction on switching service providers is partially moderated by inertia. Importantly, these relationships are reasonably robust given past switching behavior and contract status of consumers.

The authors find evidence which explains some of the causes of inertia, and show that it has both direct and moderating effects on service provider switching intentions, though not necessarily the behavior of changing service providers. However, support was found for its indirect role through intent as an influence on switching behavior. Importantly, the authors find that inertia has lingering effects, in that it influences the perception of switching difficulties and, hence, behavior up to 11 months in the future.

Managerial implications are that service firms can profit from customer inertia through a reduction in churn. However, high levels of customer inertia over the longer term may increase the level of customer vulnerability to competitor offers and marketing activities, as satisfaction with the provider does not in itself explain switching intentions or behavior.

This study is the first study to contribute to an understanding of the antecedent drivers of customer inertia with respect to service provider switching and to empirically evaluate a variety of antecedent factors that potentially affect switching intentions. Importantly, the long lasting latent effect of inertia in indirectly influencing service switching behavior was found to persist some 11 months later.

The literature of organizational change hints that adaptability and inertia not only counterbalance but also reinforce each other, and the inertia-adaptability balance over time is nonlinear. The author aims to address this view more clearly by presenting a multi-stage conceptual model that delineates how adaptability and inertia take turns to override each other. In addition, data collected from over 400 nonprofit organizations within the USA were used to test this model.

This study uses polynomial regression to examine the multi-stage conceptual model. More precisely, it tests how organizational age influences an organization's innovativeness, managerial risk aversion, and red tape.

The findings support the multi-stage conceptual model. The results imply that organizational ecology and rational adaptation are mutually compatible perspectives in explaining organizational age dynamics.

This study introduces a multi-stage model that more clearly examines how adaptability and inertia counterbalance and reinforce over time. More importantly, the author empirically examines the nonlinear organizational age dynamics using quantitative data.

Based on definition and characteristic analysis, this paper seeks to propose a formation mechanism of knowledge rigidity, which is constituted by the effects of three precipitating factors: time‐effectiveness of knowledge, reinforcing effectiveness, and sunk cost effect in knowledge selection mechanism.

By presenting knowledge time‐effectiveness model, reinforcing effectiveness model, and knowledge selection mechanism, the paper theoretically analyzes firms' rigid behavior of knowledge application. Theories of increasing returns and sunk cost are introduced to explain the formation process of knowledge rigidity in firms. Two cases are presented to analyze the knowledge rigidity in industrial firms basing on the proposed models and mechanism.

First, the lifecycle of knowledge rigidity is dynamically defined by knowledge time‐effectiveness. Second, the degree of rigidity and firm's dependence on specific knowledge are enhanced by reinforcing effectiveness during the process of application. At the end of the life cycle, the sunk cost mainly hinders a firm's decision making to replace ineffective knowledge.

Quantitative research is needed to further explore the formation mechanism of knowledge rigidity and to present operational approaches for practitioners. The proposed models and mechanism are useful for understanding the knowledge rigidity and analyzing its formation mechanism in firms.

This paper provides theoretical support to realize knowledge rigidity in KM practice. Three indicators were proposed to evaluate the rigidity and action suggestions were given to help control knowledge rigidity in firms.

Causal analysis models and a formation mechanism are proposed to show how knowledge rigidity forms.

The purpose of this paper is to build a System Dynamics model to reveal the structure and dynamics of knowledge coupling affecting firms' innovation results in the digital context.

Drawing on the recombined view of innovation, this paper divides knowledge coupling into two dimensions: component knowledge coupling and architectural knowledge coupling. Then, the authors build a system dynamics model to identify the interaction of knowledge coupling factors and use the professional Vensim PLE to conduct simulation analysis to capture the dynamic interaction of motivation factors in knowledge coupling system.

The results show that both technology resources and digital dynamic capability play positive effects in the mechanism of knowledge coupling influencing firms' innovation results, while organizational inertia negatively affects the process of knowledge coupling to achieve innovation outcomes.

This study develops a holistic system dynamics model to reveal and elaborate on the complex dynamic mechanism of knowledge coupling impacting firms' innovation results in the context of digitization and provides a theoretical reference for companies to effectively adopt digital technology to carry out knowledge coupling strategy.

This paper aims to analyze the mechanism underlying the impact of boundary-spanning search (BS) on the sustainable development ability (SDA) of service-oriented manufacturing enterprises and to emphasize the intermediary role of knowledge integration (KI). The moderating role of knowledge inertia on the link between BS and KI is also investigated.

This study constructs direct, mediating and moderating effects, selects 110 service-oriented manufacturing enterprises as research samples and obtains empirical data from questionnaires and annual reports. Among them, triangulation is skilfully used to obtain questionnaire data, and the regression method is used to test model relationships.

The results show that BS not only directly enhances SDA but also indirectly affects it through KI, which plays a mediating role in the impact of BS on SDA. In addition, knowledge inertia negatively moderates the relationship between BS and KI.

This paper makes three contributions. First, it enriches the research on the antecedent variables related to the SDA of service-oriented manufacturing enterprises. Second, by examining the mediating role of KI and the moderating role of knowledge inertia, the relationship between BS and SDA is revealed. Third, the research on knowledge management related to the SDA of service-oriented manufacturing enterprises is expanded.

Building on theories of inter-organizational knowledge flows and social network, we explored how two types of collaboration network embeddedness (NE) (i.e. structural embeddedness (SE) and relational embeddedness (RE)) drive firms' inbound and outbound open innovation (OI) practices from a knowledge flow perspective, and further examined these relationships are to what extent contingent on network inertia (NI).

In this empirical research, the authors collected a sample of patents in the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry over the period of 2000–2018. Then the authors examined the direct roles of SE and RE in collaboration networks on firms' inbound and outbound OI practices from a knowledge flow perspective, and the moderating role of NI by using negative binomial regression.

Empirical results from our study of 96 firms showed that both bridging structural holes position in collaboration networks (i.e. SE) and having stronger tie strength (i.e. RE) would positively affects firms' inbound OI practices, whereas only having stronger tie strength in collaboration networks (i.e. RE) would facilitate outbound OI practices. In addition, NI strengthens the relationships between SE and firm OI practice, but weakens the positive roles of RE on firm OI practice.

This empirical research provides new insights into whether and how firms can grasp the benefits of collaboration NE to conduct OI activities by exploring NI contingencies. It further sheds lights on the scope of the NE–OI issue from a knowledge flow perspective by extending its research context to UAV industry.

Motivated by behavioral theories of the firm, this study aims to consider the extent to which knowledge gaps, organizational inertia and conflicts of interest prevent large real estate investment management firms from approaching asset management in a comprehensive manner.

Results of 93 semi-structured interviews conducted with real estate practitioners working in the USA are thematically analyzed.

All of the aforementioned factors are found to influence real estate asset management practices and serve as potential obstacles to operational excellence.

The qualitative analysis is limited in the sense that it focuses exclusively on the perceptions of real estate practitioners in the USA who work for relatively large organizations. However, it offers compelling evidence that comprehensive asset management is difficult under the best of circumstances, and becomes even more so in the presence of knowledge gaps, organizational inertia and conflicts of interest.

Those working in asset management or with asset managers must be mindful of the obstacles discussed if they hope to encourage and facilitate process improvement.

The study contributes to a small but growing, body of research examining the challenges large real estate investment management firms face when trying to derive value from their asset management platforms.

Top management team (TMT) serves as the critical designer of a firm’s business model, whose cognition exerts key influence on business model design (BMD). Drawing insights from the managerial cognition and knowledge-based views, this paper aims to examine the effect of TMT transactive memory system on BMD and investigate how the relationship between TMT transactive memory system and BMD is contingent upon the firm’s strategic orientation.

Survey data collected from 210 Chinese firms was used to test the research hypotheses through multivariate regression analysis.

This paper reveals that TMT transactive memory system facilitates novelty- and efficiency-centered BMD. Furthermore, both differentiation orientation and cost leadership orientation can strengthen the effect of TMT transactive memory system on novelty-centered BMD; the impact of TMT transactive memory system on efficiency-centered BMD is weakened by differentiation orientation but strengthened by cost leadership orientation.

This paper adds to the business model literature by unraveling the effect of TMT transactive memory system on BMD, which not only enriches the internal cognitive antecedents of BMD but also provides an in-depth understanding of how TMTs can use their knowledge structure to proactively design a certain business model. Moreover, this paper also offers insights into how TMTs can better use transactive memory system to design business models according to the specific strategic orientation.