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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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate pertinent knowledge protection literature. At the same time, however, knowledge protection is often a neglected or underdeveloped area. This is all the more concerning as knowledge protection plays an essential part in preserving an organization’s competitive advantage. Despite the recognition of this issue by scholars, the knowledge management literature has so far tended to concentrate on the facilitation of knowledge sharing rather than on knowledge protection.

In this paper, the authors present the results of a structured literature review undertaken to investigate the current state of research on knowledge protection. The paper identifies core domains in knowledge protection literature, discusses theoretical perspectives and research methods, sheds light on the role of the information technology (IT) artefact in knowledge protection research and develops a portfolio of knowledge protection measures.

In this paper, 48 papers were analyzed by taking five analytical dimensions into account: research domains, research methods and models, the role of the IT artefact, theoretical views and measures to enforce knowledge protection. Based on the discussion of the results, promising avenues for further research were identified and a research agenda was proposed. The authors argued for more research on the protection of tacit knowledge, more in-depth empirical investigations, more research on IT support and a stronger consideration of theories in knowledge protection research, as well as research on how organizations could build a strategy of knowledge protection.

Tacit knowledge, as well as informal alliances or (social) networks, is under-researched so far. Knowledge protection phenomena need to be investigated in depth to test the assumptions stated in many conceptual papers. IT artefacts should be developed and evaluated. More theory-based research and overarching frameworks or strategies for knowledge protection need to be developed.

In this paper, a portfolio of knowledge protection measures was developed, which might be of particular interest for practitioners. Further, the paper provides a good overview of the current state of practice regarding knowledge protection.

So far, there is no structured literature available focussing on the topic of knowledge protection.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the particular information needs of external auditors performing information technology (IT) audits at service providers in cross-organizational settings and to promote a software-based approach towards their satisfaction. The approach is intended to supplement the manual approaches currently adopted by auditors to procure information in such settings.

The authors analyzed data collected by means of a series of 16 interviews and four think-aloud sessions with experienced professionals.

Information procurement is perceived as tedious by auditors and largely relies on repeat interviews and perusal of documents. Given the growing complexity of cross-organizational settings, manual approaches to information procurement are reaching their limits. A considerable portion of the information required is often stored by service providers using software that is inaccessible to auditors. The authors argue that a software-based approach providing an interface for auditors to access relevant information held by such software presents an avenue worth exploring.

The authors outline how the information stored by service providers using software can be made accessible with reasonable effort. Complementing manual approaches to information procurement with an audit interface would reduce workload and increase quality.

The concept of an audit interface represents a novel and promising approach to meeting the information needs of auditors performing IT audits in cross-organizational settings more effectively. Both auditors and service providers would benefit from its implementation.

This paper aims to study the effect of knowledge management in formulating competitive strategies for knowledge-based small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia.

A quantitative approach of a survey was carried out on 135 owners and managers of knowledge-based SMEs in Malaysia. Structural equation modeling technique was used to investigate the relationship between knowledge management and competitive strategies. SmartPLS software is used to analyze the quantitative data. Only SMEs which are involved in R&D and innovation were selected to get the right respondents who meet the objective of the study.

The findings show mixed results. Most dimensions of knowledge management have significant relationships to differentiation strategy except for knowledge creation and knowledge acquisition, with only knowledge acquisition showing a significant relationship to cost leadership. Findings reveal that knowledge management has a positive effect on competitive strategies with more inclination toward differentiation strategy, compared to cost leadership strategy which does synchronize with their commitment in research and development and innovation.

This study is only focused on knowledge-based SMEs in central Malaysia. Second, the use of a survey approach minimized the flow of information.

SMEs do have knowledge management practices but may not be exploiting it well. Mapping knowledge management practices would help SMEs identify their strengths and weaknesses to explore better business opportunities. This proves that SMEs are leveraging their resources through knowledge application, dissemination, storage and protection to be different than their competitors. However, their apparent lack of knowledge in knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation should be addressed accordingly, as it is important for their future continuous sustainability.

This paper contributes to the literature of knowledge management relating to competitive strategies in SMEs. The study offers insights on how competitive strategies were formulated through knowledge management. The mixed results reveal a new different outlook of knowledge management relating to competitive strategies.

The global food industry is faced with the dilemma of finding a balance between food wastage and food shortage. Approximately one-third of food produced globally goes to waste, while about 800 million people suffer from undernourishment. Given this context, the purpose of this study is to investigate the unresolved challenges related to enhancing transparency associated with products of high perishability and low shelf life.

The authors conducted 25 interviews with global agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) experts to ask what impedes the progress of the current technologies, such as blockchain, to enable transparency and traceability (T&T) in AFSCs.

The findings indicate barriers at the individual, firm and supply chain levels. Based on these barriers, the authors propose an interconnected framework to explain technologically-driven T&T and guide on barrier removal from AFSCs. The authors conclude that by applying technology (i.e. blockchain) the authors can resolve the tension of supporting T&T in AFSCs. This can enable the efficient and transparent tracking of goods, reduction of food waste and loss, as well as promotion of the use of recyclable packaging and further sustainable practices and materials, all of which are aligned with a range of UN Sustainable Development Goals (2, 8, 10 and 12). Moreover, the authors see that some factors are interrelated. Based on these factors, the authors build an interconnected framework to guide on barrier removal from AFSCs. Managers in AFSC would find the findings especially relevant.

Drawing on industrial network theory and signalling theory, the authors propose an interconnected framework for explaining barriers (challenges) and potential solutions (opportunities) to T&T in AFSCs. This framework is developed by examining the interconnections of barriers at micro, meso and macro levels and applying signalling theory to explain how solutions address these barriers. The specific contributions of this study are: the list of barriers that impede the implementation of technological solutions for T&T in AFSCs; and a three-stage framework that explains how to remove the barriers for T&T. The study is limited by the focus on blockchain, which calls for future research once the next decentralised technology becomes available.

Over the past decade, the cost of product development has increased drastically, and this is due to the inability of most enterprises to locate suitable and optimal collaborators for knowledge sharing. Nevertheless, knowledge sharing is a mechanism that helps people find the best collaborators with relevant knowledge. Hence, a new approach for locating optimal collaborators with relevant knowledge is needed, which could help enterprise in reducing cost and time in a knowledge-sharing environment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

One unique challenge in the domain of knowledge sharing is that collaborators do not possess the same number of events resident in the knowledge available for sharing. In this paper, the authors present a new approach for locating optimal collaborators in knowledge-sharing environment using the combinatorial algorithm (CA-KSE).

The proposed pattern-matching approach implemented in Java is considered efficient for solving the issue peculiar to collaboration in knowledge-sharing domain. The authors benchmarked the proposed approach with its semi-global pairwise alignment and global alignment counterparts through scores comparison and the receiver operating characteristic curve. The results obtained from the comparisons showed that CA-KSE is a perfect test having an area under curve of 0.9659, compared to the other approaches.

The paper has proposed an efficient algorithm, which is considered better than related methods, for matching several collaborators (more than two) in KS environment. The method could be deployed in medical field for gene analysis, software organizations for distributed development and academics for knowledge sharing.

One sign of strength of this approach, compared to most sequence alignment approaches that can only match two collaborators at a time, is that it can match several collaborators at a faster rate.

Ubiquitous digital technologies are driving organisations to embrace non-traditional digitally transformed business models incessantly. Heterogeneous literature contributions have resulted in a spur in the research related to business transformation driven by digital technologies in recent years; consequently, the research under the digital transformation (DT), even though becoming a hotspot, remains very fragmented. The authors endeavour to holistically present the literature's intellectual structure under DT as a concept, its evolving journey and the emerging research streams in the business and management domains using the techniques of bibliometric analysis.

By performing bibliometric analysis on 234 research articles published over the last 20 years in the DT domain, retrieved from Thompson Reuters Web of Science ^TM, this study culls out thorough insights from the citation, co-citation and keyword analysis. Further emerging research streams were evaluated using VOSviewer software.

The study depicts an overall incremental trend of year-on-year publications, authors' performance, publication journals, associated institutions and research driving countries, along with key insights from co-citation network analysis. Furthermore, the study evaluates four research areas – organisational impacts, applied applications and insights, operational processes and social aspects, comprising eighteen research streams that comprehensively cover-up research under the DT domain.

The study contributes to the literature of DT by amalgamating the status of the present research, but more importantly, by deriving the research areas and research streams, which can be further expanded by researchers as future research streams.

For the practitioners, the study aims to act as a ready reckoner repository with practice-oriented literature references to facilitate them building knowledge and taking effective strategic decisions to harness the benefits of DT more proficiently.

This study illustrates the bibliometric structure of the DT literature and presents insights from the growth of the literature year-on-year.

This paper aims to systematically review the literature on knowledge leakage through social networks in the past decade to find existing gaps, identify potential risk factors while, ultimately, proposing ways of mitigating these factors.

This study adopted Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis as guide for searching relevant scholarly publications. Subject-specific and -related research papers were obtained from three databases, namely, Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCOhost. The review data was generated from the search results while adopting specific criteria to either accept or reject a particular publication during the search process.

Technological, operational and human knowledge factors are some of the risks resulting from knowledge leakage. Highlights of the paper include strategies for mitigating these factors, including continuous training, creating awareness, banning social media usage at work and reinforcing nondisclosure policies. This study also found potential gaps from the literature, categorized as topical, geographical, industrial, theoretical, methodological and conceptual gaps while proposing ways of addressing these gaps using specific research questions. These questions set the direction for future studies on knowledge leakage and social networks.

Implications of the findings are laid out, particularly the idea of developing actionable managerial plans for preventing knowledge leakage from occurring in organizations in the first place. The systematic, rigorous, transparent and methodological procedures used throughout the entire research process strongly suggest that the findings and conclusions are legitimate. While the findings were not drawn arbitrarily, they potentially offer windows of opportunities for bridging the six potential gaps identified in this paper.

As emphasised by the theory of knowledge-based view, knowledge constitutes the basic element for a firm’s competitive advantage. Consequently, a firm’s knowledge at risk could have an adverse effect on its performance. In this regard, this paper aims to investigate potential knowledge risks present in an (ICT)-supported collaborative project and establishes inter- and multi-relationships among these risks.

In this paper, an integrated approach using the total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) technique and MICMAC analysis is implemented to determine the hierarchical inter-relationships among knowledge risks and classify them according to their driving and dependence power.

The result reveals seven knowledge risks. The analysis establishes cybercrime and espionage as high drivers of knowledge risks in an ICT-supported collaborative project. Further, a comprehensive model is developed showing the hierarchical structure and multi- and inter-relationships among the analysed risks.

From a practical viewpoint, the proposed model in this study will be of great importance to practitioners because it highlights the most prominent knowledge risks in an ICT-supported collaborative project. Additionally, it will provide a clue for effective knowledge risk management in a systematic approach.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies to use both the TISM technique and MICMAC analysis to identify and classify knowledge risks in an ICT-supported collaborative project.