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Knowledge management is shot through with complex questions. This is certainly the case with regard to boundaries, as they constitute both a bounding line that has to be crossed if the knowledge required for innovation is to be diffused and a form of protection for scientific and technological organisations and institutions. This examination of boundaries leads to a state-of-the-art review that begins with the question of knowledge transfer. The authors start with foundations of the knowledge dynamic within organisations. Nevertheless, certain gaps were identified in the theory, as it did not seem so easy to carry out transfers. This led in turn to attempts to identify the boundaries that were causing difficulties and that had to be crossed. This led to an examination of the role of boundaries. What status could boundaries have when knowledge was expanding enormously within communities? Finally, the authors come face-to-face with knowledge management systems that have tended to redefine the forms that boundaries take.

The paper uses a conceptual approach and is a meta analysis of the state-of-the-art review conducted to introduce the Special Issue “Knowledge Across Boundaries” JKM Volume 19, No. 5, 2015 (October).

The notions of transfer and boundary demonstrated their usefulness in the development of a new theory, namely the knowledge-based view. These concepts were then critiqued, with reference, first, to the contexts in which communication takes place and, second, to the cognitive dimensions of the activity. Finally, studies showed that the cognitive and organisational approaches can be linked and that they shed light on many knowledge-sharing situations. Boundaries are no longer the object of attention, the focus having switched to the collective process of creating new concepts.

This state-of-the-art review is limited to the papers about Management Science.

Knowledge hybridization is possible but must be referred to resources made available by the division of labour between disciplines (Shinn, 1997). Expansive learning (Engeström, 2010) is close to boundary construction (Holford, 2015) to indicate the dialectical view between instituting and instituted society (Castoriadis, 1975, 1987). We are now perhaps at the point of transition between the interest in “boundary spanners” and a new concern with “boundary construction”.

This paper introduces a methodology of knowledge transfer knowledge transfer in firms strategies of learning.

The paper provides the concept (with examples) of ‘boundary construction’.

The purpose of this paper was to build a review of the various management processes of this knowledge in this domain, with the aim of identifying research topics and perspectives for knowledge management (KM) within the boundaries between science and society. At the boundary between science and society, the development of agricultural systems is grounded in various innovation processes that are currently being challenged by sustainability issues. In particular, farmers’ knowledge is emphasized today in various reports and scientific studies as a way of designing more sustainable agricultural systems.

A literature analysis was performed on a database built from the Web of Science and 273 scientific article abstracts were qualitatively analyzed.

Four KM strategies on the basis of the objectives of these papers, the arguments used to justify the study of farmers’ knowledge (FK) and the position of the authors in relation to this knowledge were built. These strategies can be broken down as follows: assessing FK to improve it; documenting FK to capitalize or legitimize it in development processes; using FK as a resource for innovation; and facilitating the sharing of various sources of knowledge to increase the efficiency of development projects.

Because the four KM strategies show a relative genericity, research perspectives for each of them, some of which were related to the KM community and some of which extended the focus on political, legal or sociological aspects of knowledge production processes at the boundary between science and society, were drawn.

The four categories of KM strategies revealed the importance of legitimization processes of practitioners’ knowledge when dealing with innovation at science–society boundaries, whereas such processes are often neglected by classical KM methodologies.

This work questions the category of “practitioners’ knowledge”, stressing the need to go beyond the dichotomy between scientific and empirical knowledge and to recognize the hybrid nature of knowledge. It also shatters the myth that local knowledge is more sustainable than science-driven innovations, arguing for more KM efforts at the boundary between science and society.

Even if farmers’ knowledge has been used since the 1970s to promote more endogenous innovation processes as opposed to classical science-driven innovation processes, no review has yet been done of the use of farmers’ knowledge in the development of agricultural systems.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the solicitation of outside experts in the upstream phase of innovation projects, which fall within the scope of the exploration and which take place within a context of radical uncertainty: how are these experts identified, selected and mobilised? While companies are compelled to manage exploration projects, the processes underlying the expansion of knowledge in these projects are not well known.

Based on the literature, this paper first presents a conceptual view of the notion of expert. Then, the research question is analyzed by means of a case study of a polar expedition. The project leader seeks a knowledgeable person who has never been identified as an expert, but whose knowledge is essential.

The expert appears both in his cognitive and social dimensions. Moreover, he emerges out of the situation, on the basis of neither strong nor weak signals. The rationality of expert solicitation falls within a pragmatic logic where the acquired knowledge must reduce the uncertainty so that the project can progress. The learning process enables to increase gradually the knowledge of the actor but also to build the legitimacy required in order to have access to the expert.

Findings can be translated in more general situations. Indeed, polar expeditions projects and exploratory innovation projects (Garel and Lièvre, 2010) possess some common characteristics: lack of knowledge concerning, timing issues, need to implement a pragmatic, enquiry-based learning. These projects strongly rely on external expert knowledge. This case study suggests that, while it may be useful, planning should not strictly define the course of action. A central competence of the project leader is to manage the duality between planning and adaptation. This implies the ability to adapt, to detect and to assess human resources and knowledge flows rapidly, as well as to weave social links inside and outside the organisation.

The existing literature offers a comprehensive view of experts in an organisation. However, the questions of expert selection and identification remain open. This paper fills a gap in the literature concerning the way experts are identified and selected. The case study shows that identifying experts does not solely depend on weak signals (reputation) or on strong signals (the expert’s social status). Rather, the expert emerges in the situation, in an unexpected way. The expert’s social dimension is not sufficient and one must look to the cognitive roots of the expertise. On the other hand, the fact is emphasised that the expert is a social construct which emerges from the solicitation process.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate motivations of team members to source knowledge and how the sourced knowledge increases their reuse and creation outcomes.

A model based on knowledge sourcing perspective is proposed and tested to link knowledge sourcing methods in teams to their performance outcomes. The hypotheses are tested on data collected from a survey of 341 project teams.

The findings show the critical role of team members’ learning orientation in increasing knowledge sourcing, reuse and creation; group knowledge sourcing and repositories are more appropriate to increase knowledge reuse; the Internet is more effective to increase knowledge creation; and knowledge reuse increases knowledge creation among team members with a strong learning orientation.

Further studies can replicate the model presented in this paper and introduce group characteristics to improve its explanatory power. Also, use of self-reported measures in data collection may lead to biases; future research should collate different measures longitudinally or use separate primary and secondary observations.

Team leaders should enhance team effectiveness by ensuring diversity of knowledge and skills. Current research emphasizes that team leaders can integrate a crowdsourcing or “users as co-creators” approach to increase knowledge creation by team members. Team members’ learning orientation can be increased by promoting a climate that encourages open discussion of problems, mistakes and errors.

This research highlights that knowledge sourcing methods produce different performance outcomes regarding knowledge reuse and creation. These insights can be useful to team leaders and researchers to better understand what motivates team members to source knowledge and how it increases their reuse and creation outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is explore an organizational design that allows firms to invest in transferable strategic human capital. Strategic human capital requires considerable investment in training costs, effective compensation, opportunities for professional development and expectancy of long employment relationship within a firm. A firm can undertake investment in strategic knowledge and workers can engage in learning only in these circumstances. However, there are a number of risks that are associated with investment in strategic human capital within a firm. In this paper, the author argues that providing strategic human capital to other firms within alliances could be a strategy for leveraging resource. Strategic knowledge facilitates transactions between firms possessing co-specialized human capital and tangible resources. Organizational design of an alliance based on co-specialization allows to balance costs and returns for the human capital supplier, as well as for beneficiary and workers. Within an alliance, the human capital supplier provides workers to a beneficiary firm and coordinates their activities. Supplier specialized in human capital investment ensures improved performance, productivity and efficiency of workers. Possibility to form a greater pool of labor force and to centralize training allows optimizing cost and sharing risks associated with investment activity among alliance participants. Human resource practices in an alliance system foster long-term employment relationship. Entering an alliance increases number of job positions, professional development opportunities through horizontal mobility, promotion and learning opportunities for workers. Finally, alliances allow leveraging investment in human capital beyond a single organization.

This paper conceptualizes the use of alliance based on co-specialization as a strategy to optimize investment in strategic human capital resource. It draws upon the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1995) and transaction cost theory (Coase, 1937; Williamson, 1981) to examine an alliance as a strategy for leveraging the human capital resources for accessing new markets, building reputation and sharing the risks across more than one organization.

First, the paper reviews the theoretical literature on human capital as a strategic resource (Becker, 1962; Coff, 1997), its sourcing on internal and external labor markets and respective employment systems (Delery and Doty, 1996; Doeringer and Piore, 1971). Second, it focuses on the features of human capital resource (Barney, 1986; Chi, 1994; Doz and Hamel, 1998). Third, it conceptualizes the use of alliances based on co-specialization as organizational structures for investment in human capital across organizations and examines respective employment system and HR practices (Delery and Doty, 1996; Doeringer and Piore, 1971). As result, the author argues that an alliance can be an alternative mean to optimize returns on investment in human capital with strategic transferable knowledge. By consequence, the author describes an alliance employment system and illustrates the arguments with a case of human capital trading in a co-specialization alliance under a long-term management contract in the luxury hotel industry.

This paper discusses collaborative ventures as a sourcing strategy of the human capital. An alliance strategy is relevant for sourcing the strategic human capital resources. Human capital resource can be accessed by firms through transfer of skills and organizational routines within collaborative agreements, such as alliances based on co-specialization. In this case, alliance is an organizational architecture between organizations that improves the efficiency and productivity, reduces marginal cost on training due to larger scale of operations and reduces risk by splitting investment in human capital and by offering more career and development opportunities for strategic knowledge workers.

This paper aims to ask the question of the contingency of a firm’s absorptive capacity upon the type of expected outcome. Thus, this paper looks at different expected outputs in terms of more or less radical innovations and sees if there are consequences on the absorptive process underpinning cognitive structures and processes, as embodied in its organizational and social capital.

To do so, a qualitative study was conducted. In total, 23 persons in three French industrial firms were interviewed about their firm’s absorptive capacity. One of these firms aims at “new-to-the-firm” innovations, while the other two aim at “new-to-the-world” innovations.

Results suggest that while “new-to-the-firm” innovations tend to favor the use of social capital, “new-to-the-world” innovations tend to rely more on organizational capital. These rather counterintuitive results are interpreted by the necessity to take into account other variables than knowledge distance in the absorption of new knowledge. In particular, complexity and time-length would call for greater use of organizational capital, while speed and reactivity would instead require greater use of social capital.

This is to the best of the authors’ knowledge that one of the first study evidencing the contingent nature of the absorptive process. Further, results tend to show the form absorptive capacity takes depends not only on cognitive aspects but also on the particular environment the firm evolves in.

Cooperative relationships between actors located in the same geographical area that are economically independent and culturally distinct are the heart of functioning innovation clusters. This can slow down the creation of common innovation projects, particularly in French innovation clusters where cooperation is influenced by the governmental financing devoted to this system. This research focuses on knowledge brokering activities implemented in this inter-organizational context, showing how they cross knowledge boundaries, structure cooperative dynamics and participate in common strategy-making. The mobilization of the strategy as practice theory allows for an in-depth analysis, shedding light on various practices, resources and practitioners related to the brokering activities taking place within an innovation cluster in Paris. Findings show a widespread development of brokering activities that emerges from cluster governance unit to its networks according to a reflexive relationship progressive structured over time.

This research is based on a longitudinal exploratory analysis of the Parisian cluster Advancity. To capture its organizational dynamics, two databases of the cluster (focused on innovation projects and integration of members), 24 power point files presented to negotiate strategy and 13 interviews with managers and members of the cluster were used. The whole data was triangulated and generated categories of data that can be compared with the concepts of the literature on innovation clusters (governance), brokering activities (knowledge access, learning, networking and implementation) and strategy-making (recursive process and adaptation of the strategy).

The analysis shows the effects of each type of brokering activities on strategy-making across knowledge and organizational boundaries. The practices of implementation activity initially absent from the cluster become, in its mature phase, one of the central activities. Moreover, all the brokering activities are initially handled by the managers of the cluster and progressively are extended to their members, then becoming a widespread activity within the internal networks. The maturation of these practices goes together with the maturation of its own cluster. The practice of experimentation particularly affects brokering activities and produces learning and networking effects within the cluster.

From a managerial point of view, considering the organization of the clusters as a constellation of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) emphasizes that the knowledge brokerage activities can be extended and delayed within each community that makes up the organization. A top-down approach could therefore suffocate the network. It would be interesting to develop this research approach in future work and complete this research by reinforcing microscopic analysis enabled, for example, by tracking a small number of innovation projects during their lifecycle.

The empirical foundation proposed in this research strengthens the scientific nature of the theory of the activity that is itself integrated in the perspective of the practice (Seidl et al., 2006). The multilevel approach and wealth of the mobilized and analysed empirical data allowed making more visible how a social activity builds itself, develops and creates aperture effects on the strategy driven by innovation at the intersection of different boundaries.

The results of this research provide a theoretical contribution in that they allow to revisit the classification of the activities of a knowledge broker (Hargadon 1998, 2005) in a new organizational context representative of the knowledge-based innovation (Amin and Cohendet, 2004). They are also contributing to the current emerging from the knowledge-based view of clusters (Bahlmann and Huysman, 2008; Arikan, 2009) by mobilizing the theory of the practice (Whittington, 2006; Jarzabkowski, 2005). This perspective helps to discern a particular form of strategy-making within the clusters.

The purpose of this paper is to study organizational learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences. According to March (2010), this kind of high intellect learning is difficult to accomplish because it requires deliberate investments in knowledge transfer and creation. Zollo and Winter (2002) emphasized how knowledge codification can facilitate this process, as long as it is “well-performed”. However, knowledge management scholars have yet to explore what is meant by well-performed codification and how to achieve it.

This paper addresses this gap and provides a conceptual analysis based on two related but previously disconnected research areas: organizational learning and knowledge management.

This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, a new understanding of different types of experiences and their effects on learning is proposed. Then the codification process using a critical realist paradigm to overcome the epistemological boundaries of knowledge versus knowing is discussed; in doing so, it is shown that codification can take different forms to be “well-performed”. Finally, appropriate codification strategies based on experience type are identified.

The abstraction-oriented codification outlined in this paper runs counter to the logic of concrete codification that dominates both theory and practice. Thus, going beyond the traditional debate on the degree of codification (i.e. should knowledge be fully codified or just partly codified), this paper introduced a new debate about the appropriate degree of abstraction.

The purpose of this paper is to study the obstacles to knowledge transfer between organizations belonging to different cultures by making use of the socialization–externalization – combination – internalization (SECI) model. The contribution made by this paper is in the use of the SECI model for studying this type of issue. Although it recognizes the epistemological duality between tacit and explicit knowledge, the traditional literature had not adopted this theoretical structure. The explanation for this is an excessively simplistic interpretation of the SECI model in its 1995 version together with a lack of knowledge about Nonaka’s more recent works – Nonaka et al. (2008).

The authors use a comparative case study opposing a failure and a success, and rely on Latour controversies to account for the context and contradictions. One of the authors worked for five years as a mediator in these projects and adopted the reflective practitioner posture of Schön.

Using the SECI model is relevant for studying this question. The results obtained converge with the literature and mark the SECI’s first stage – socialization – as an operation of major importance. The authors show that the failure in knowledge transfer is due to a deficit of socialization, as the lack of prolonged situations of co-presence of the actors, i.e. the lack of shared context, impedes knowledge conversion.

To go further, conditions of the socialization context must be better specified and developed. Second, cases in other areas than the health sector to observe the circulation of knowledge could be developed.

The findings suggest ways for managers to fight against knowledge transfer barriers in multicultural contexts, relying on the socialization process.

Accounting for the problem of knowledge transfer in a multicultural context through the SECI model, which focusses on the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge, opens a fruitful line of reflexion. It would organize trips for French managers in China with a strong intercultural dimension.

Accounting for the problem of knowledge transfer in a multi culural context through the SECI model, which focusses on the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge, opens a fruitful line of reflexion.