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The purpose of this guest editorial is to highlight the importance of knowledge management and organizational learning in firm innovation, offering an integrative framework to understand this complex business phenomenon.

Based on the literature review, the guest editorial shows a general review on “A Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation” articulating and integrating a total number of ten theoretical and empirical contributions about this topic.

Theoretical and empirical works are organized in three main topics. The first one refers to the importance of external knowledge, networking, and relationships as key drivers of firm technological innovation, offering an “open or relational innovation framework”. The second one shows several papers on the growing importance of KIBS (Knowledge‐Intensive Business Services) in a Knowledge Economy and Society. Finally, this general review integrates papers about organizational context, and its role on knowledge management and firm innovation.

The paper and special issue tries to offer some new relevant advances for the academic community in the growing body of knowledge management and firm innovation. Nevertheless, due to its special issue nature, the theoretical and empirical advances showed on it represent only a partial view of a “Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation”.

Managers need to understand the precise nature and sources (internals and externals) of firm innovation. In this vein, this journal number shows empirical research developed in different countries and industries illustrating some interesting insights about this complex business phenomenon.

This general review shows new lines of theoretical and empirical research regarding knowledge management, organizational learning, and firm innovation in a useful integrative framework: “A Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation”

This study aims to build on equity theory to assess the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) underpayment on the accumulation of firm-specific knowledge, accounting for the moderating effects of the CEO compensation gap and the clarity of the board’s informal hierarchy.

This study starts with all firms listed in the Execucomp database for the period 1992 to 2006. Then, all data sources are merged and entries with missing information are excluded. The final data set used for model estimations includes 1,152 firm-year observations. The command xtreg in Stata 12 with the fixed-effect option (fe) is used to estimate the relationship between CEO underpayment and firm-specific knowledge.

This study proposed and examined the role of CEO underpayment in discouraging CEO willingness to invest firm-specific human capital and, accordingly, to adopt a strategy of accumulating lower levels of firm-specific knowledge assets. The empirical analyses strongly support this argument. Moreover, CEO compensation gaps and the informal hierarchy of boards negatively moderated this relationship. That is, CEO underpayment had a weaker negative effect on firm-specific knowledge when the CEO compensation gap and the clarity of the board’s informal hierarchy were high.

Prior studies from the knowledge-based perspective have focused on the importance of firm-specific knowledge in enabling a firm to achieve superior financial performance. However, relatively little attention has been paid to CEOs’ willingness to accumulate firm-specific knowledge. The present study contributes to the knowledge-based view of the firm. This study integrates equity theory with the knowledge-based view of the firm by highlighting how unfair compensation of CEOs may discourage them to fully realize a firm’s potential to generate specific knowledge. By incorporating the fairness issue of CEO compensation into the knowledge-based view, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the origins of firm-specific knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze important theoretical work conducted in the research streams of co-opetition and value creation. While innovation is acknowledged as a desirable and empirically verified outcome of co-opetition between firms, academic research has not systematically examined value creation outcomes of intra-firm co-opetition. This study aims to explore the nature of co-opetitive relationships within the firm. Processes of knowledge creation, differentiation and evolution are presented in the paper.

The paper examines and compares co-opetitive dynamics in different contexts, by adopting a multi-level approach to help understand and analyze the complex phenomenon of intra-organizational co-opetition. Value creation in an ecology perspective is discussed to enhance the conceptualization of the Quintuple Helix.

This paper highlights the role of knowledge differentiation as a driver of value creation. In particular, intra-firm co-opetition dynamics are investigated in relationship with knowledge evolution. A theoretical model is proposed via the Dynamics of Ultra-Organizational Co-opetition and Circuits of Knowledge (DUCCK) framework.

This paper attempts to provide new perspectives on the growing academic field of co-opetition and knowledge creation. It complements previous research in intra-organizational settings and offers an alternative knowledge-based view of organizational value creation.

The paper contributes to develop managers’ practices in understanding potential benefits of intra-organizational co-opetition. The paper also brings additional insights for knowledge management (KM) practitioners, by considering the impact of co-opetition on knowledge dynamics.

This paper explores, adds to the existing theoretical knowledge and contributes to the under-researched topic of intra-organizational co-opetition. This is the first attempt to link internal co-opetition to firm’s KM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the drivers of firm’s growth such as research and development (R & D), absorptive capacity, knowledge management, organisation culture, access to finance, internationalisation and so forth. As far as the contribution is concerned, two objectives have been achieved from this empirical paper. First, this paper fills an important gap in the literature by determining the drivers of firm’s growth. Second, this study analysed the Pakistani software industry at micro level by investigating the firm’s knowledge-based assets and their significant association with labour productivity growth. Based on a face to face interview of 69 software firms, this study found that firm size, access to finance, internationalisation (exporting and outward foreign direct investment), business improvement methods and knowledge management have a positive impact on the firm’s labour productivity growth. In comparison, firm undertaking R & D and absorptive capacity showed negative association with labour productivity growth. This study implies that these software firms have low investment in knowledge-based assets. In summary, this empirical study suggests that high sunk costs, low investment in knowledge-based assets and shortage of skills generally affect the labour productivity of these software firms.

Survey analysis, using cross section data analysis.

This study found that firm size, access to finance, internationalisation (exporting and outward FDI), business improvement methods and knowledge management have a positive impact on the firm’s labour productivity growth. In comparison, firm undertaking R & D and absorptive capacity showed negative association with labour productivity growth. In summary, this empirical study suggests that high sunk costs, low investment in knowledge-based assets and shortage of skills generally affect the labour productivity of these software firms.

Additionally, suggestions for future research would be to investigate the relationship between drivers of firm growth and innovation performance. The survey analysis could be extended to other parts of country such as Karachi and Lahore for resolving causality.

First, this paper fills an important gap in the literature by determining the drivers of firm’s growth. Second, this study analysed the Pakistani software industry at micro level by investigating the firm’s knowledge-based assets and their significant association with labour productivity growth.

Higher education institutions, particularly in developing countries, are striving for superior innovation performance to cope with the challenges of contemporary educational environment. Drawing on the knowledge management capability model and knowledge-based view of firms, this study aims to determine the impact of knowledge management enablers, namely, top management knowledge value, knowledge-oriented culture and knowledge-based rewards, on innovation speed and quality and assessing the mediating role of knowledge sharing process.

Data are collected from 234 academics of higher education institutions in Pakistan and analyzed through the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results indicate that top management knowledge value and knowledge-based rewards have a positive effect on innovation speed and quality. Although knowledge-oriented culture also contributes to innovation quality, it does not influence the innovation speed. Moreover, the knowledge sharing process mediates the effect of all these knowledge management enablers on innovation speed and quality.

This study underscores the importance of three key knowledge management enablers in higher education institutions. The findings of this study suggest that signaling knowledge value from the top management, fostering knowledge-oriented culture and enacting a knowledge-based reward system are critical in facilitating knowledge sharing process and enhancing innovation speed and quality in higher education institutions.

This is among one of the earlier studies that investigates the influence of top management knowledge value, knowledge-oriented culture and knowledge-based rewards on innovation speed and quality, particularly in higher education institutions, and determines the mediating role of the knowledge sharing process.

Contemporary frameworks in the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm observe that the proprietary firm-specific assets of multinational companies (MNCs) from developed economies give them competitive advantage in international markets. However, the question “how do emerging market firms (EMFs) achieve accelerated internationalisation in knowledge based industries – despite not possessing proprietary assets and lacking critical elements of innovation eco-systems, institutions and infrastructure” has yet to be addressed. This paper aims to adopt a knowledge-based view (KBV) of the firm, identifying knowledge, both inside and outside of the firm, as a critical element for the internationalization of EMFs.

This research entailed deductive econometric analyses using panel data analysis from 925 firm-year observations, which tested our predictions on capabilities that contribute to the internationalization of EMFs from the IT industry in India.

The findings of the authors’ panel data analysis reveal that the capacity to internationalize is predicated by knowledge leverage in three principal domains: absorptive capacity, tacit knowledge and knowledge-codification. This study shows internationalization is driven by higher-order capabilities of EMFs that draw on the absorptive capacity of individuals and collectives as a dynamic capability to serve international clients worldwide.

This study highlights that the process by which EMFs gain competence is different to the Western MNCs insofar as the extent to which EMFs have to stretch their efforts of learning from clients.

For practitioners, the findings of this research are a useful guide to understand that EMFs need to make strategic investments to understand the idiosyncrasies of a variety of clients’ needs and operating environments to dynamically adapt, document the learning and leverage the tacit knowledge.

This study captures the innate ability of entrepreneurs in emerging economies to unlock their potential in human capital for globalizing operations and targeting new market segments in the industry. This can directly benefit in uplifting the income level of millions in relatively underdeveloped countries and bringing about much-needed equity in the level of income in the society.

The value of this study lies in its novel and contemporary insight on how EMFs leapfrog in a fast-changing technology space. What distinguishes the work from the static framework in literature is that EMFs learning is dynamic, and happens in an interactive mode, alongside clients in close proximity. This study captures the innate ability of entrepreneurs to unlock the potential of human capital in emerging economies for globalizing operations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework to distinguish different forms of network resource that govern knowledge‐based alliances and facilitate innovation.

The paper seeks to build theory through a critical analysis of the relevant literature.

The paper draws on the notion of network resources to better understand those assets firms have at their disposal to facilitate knowledge‐based interactions and relationships that catalyze innovation. It seeks to integrate the concept of social capital, which the paper argues largely concerns resources related to the social relations and networks held by those individuals within a particular firm. As a means of describing and identifying network resources that are more strategically held by the firm as a whole, the paper introduces the concept of network capital. Network capital is defined as consisting of investments in calculative relations by firms through which they gain access to knowledge to enhance expected economic returns. Therefore, the paper argues that it is possible to make a distinction between the two types of network resource: network capital and social capital.

Making a distinction between network capital and social capital is relevant to both scholars and decision‐makers as it provides a framework for analyzing the underlying complexity of inter‐firm networks and variability across a range of dimensions, conditions and contingencies. It also provides a framework for evaluating which networks a firm can or cannot manage and invest in to meet its requirements.

The paper develops a new and more refined framework for analyzing and evaluating knowledge‐based alliances and innovation‐driven networks between firms and other actors.

The paper aims to focus on a strategic approach for making trade-offs between knowledge and risk.

Knowledge and risk are viewed as organizational resources that have an inherent trade-off between them, so that optimal firm performance does not necessarily arise through greater accumulation of knowledge nor from reduced risk. This trade-off is represented as an efficient knowledge-risk frontier. The paper examines the dynamics of this frontier on organizational performance.

The concept of knowledge-risk strategy is presented which contends that non-probabilistic risk or uncertainty originates from gaps in knowledge.

The paper proposes a new line of research to understand decision-making in organizations, particularly those which focus on knowledge intensive products and services.

The paper proposes managerial approaches to improve organizational positioning relative to the efficient knowledge-risk frontier through greater awareness of contributors to knowledge gaps and risk in decision situations, as well as traditional strategic tools such as outsourcing.

The postulated link between risk and knowledge gaps establishes a knowledge-based view of firm risk and recognizes trade-offs for decisions regarding knowledge accumulation.

This paper aims to focus on how small knowledge‐intensive business service (KIBS) firms manage their knowledge‐based processes, or what are termed “intellectual assets”.

The paper is based on data collected from a sample of small KIBS firms located in Scotland. The methodological approach is novel in that it utilises the results of an online benchmarking tool allowing firms to gauge their intellectual asset base in comparison with other firms.

The paper finds that approaches to the strategic management of intellectual assets vary significantly according the size and type of KIBS firm. Differences in these approaches impact on the development of effective innovation processes, with resource deficiencies in smaller firms constraining their innovation capability.

It is concluded that small KIBS firms face particular challenges in managing the innovation process and establishing sustainable knowledge management practices, and may benefit from targeted policy intervention.

Unlike many other studies of KIBS firms, this paper focuses on how small KIBS firms manage their own knowledge processes as part of their strategic management approach for creating competitive advantage.

The importance of networks in the internationalisation of entrepreneurial firms is widely accepted. However, while the literature tends to focus on the existing networks of firms, there is growing evidence that many rapid internationalisers have to build new networks. This cross‐national study investigates the networks of internationalising entrepreneurial firms in Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.

A multi‐stage approach and mixed methods were employed. Online sources were used to gather information on 218 internationalising small firms, then an e‐mail instrument was administered to verify data and address information gaps, resulting in 143 usable responses (66 per cent) evenly distributed across locations. A representative sub‐sample of 53 firms was selected for further in‐depth investigation via face‐to‐face interviews with CEOs.

A high proportion of firms (25 per cent) actively used existing networks to develop their knowledge of international markets and improve their international competitiveness. However, an even larger number (34 per cent) had to build new networks because of the advanced nature of their offering. In‐depth interviews provided rich insights into the nature and scope of the firms' network development activities.

While the sample size is relatively small, the findings are consistent across locations. They suggest that further investigation of network building activities among internationalising entrepreneurial firms is required.

The results have implications on firm strategy, in terms of the strategic nature of network building and the need for systematic approaches. They also are pertinent to public policy in support of internationalisation. In particular, there is a need for support agencies to shift their focus from providing objective knowledge to supporting experiential learning and network development.

The linkage of extant network approaches to the emerging knowledge‐based view (KBV) of internationalisation enhances and advances both perspectives.