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This study aims to examine direct effects of qualified team gatekeepers on absorptive capacity (AC), and the mediating roles of combinative capabilities – knowledge integration capability (KIC) and interteam coordination.

A social networking analysis was used to analyze a unique data set collected from all members of 32 Japanese research and development (R&D) teams to identify key individuals who perform daily gatekeeping functions. This study analyzed the data through partial least squares structural equation modeling with higher-order latent variables. Finally, cross-validation tests were used with holdout samples to test the model’s predictive validity.

Qualified gatekeepers directly contribute to teams’ realized AC but not to their potential AC. Furthermore, qualified gatekeepers can improve their teams’ capability to absorb and exploit external knowledge by facilitating their capability to consolidate knowledge, that is, its KIC and interteam coordination.

Unlike prior research that asks top managers to identify team gatekeepers, this study used social network analysis to identify these vital individuals. This study provides a new framework indicating how qualified gatekeepers impact the AC of R&D teams through the examination of both the direct and indirect paths of gatekeeping abilities, two combinative capabilities as mediators and team AC.

This study aimed to examine the similarities and differences between the ability to analyze the environment and exploit new knowledge (absorptive capacity) and the skills to generate value from innovation (appropriation). These fields have similar origins and are sometimes confused by practitioners and academics.

A review was conducted based on a full-text analysis of 681 and 431 papers on appropriation and absorptive capacity, respectively, from Scopus, Science Direct and Lens, using methodologies such as text mining, backward citation analysis, modularity clustering and latent Dirichlet allocation analysis.

In business disciplines, the fields are considered different; however, in other disciplines, it was found that some authors defined them quite similarly. The citation analysis results showed that appropriation was more relevant to absorptive capacity, or vice versa. From the dimension perspective, it was found that although appropriation was considered a relevant element for absorptive capacity, the last models did not include it. Finally, it was found that studies on both topics identified the importance of appropriation and absorptive capacity for innovation performance, knowledge management and technology transfer.

This is one of the first studies to examine in-depth the relationship between appropriation and absorptive capacity, bridging a gap in both fields.

A major part of knowledge management for knowledge-intensive firms such as professional service firms is the increasing focus on thought leadership. Despite being a well-known term, it is poorly defined and analysed in the academic and practitioner literature. The aim of this article is to answer three questions. First, what is thought leadership? Second, what tensions exist when seeking to create thought leadership in knowledge-based organisations? Third, what further research is needed about thought leadership? The authors call for cross-disciplinary and academic–practitioner approaches to understanding the field of thought leadership.

The authors review the academic and practitioner literature on thought leadership to provide a rich oversight of how it is defined and can be understood by separating inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors also draw on qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with senior leaders of professional service firms.

Through analysing and building on previous understandings of the concept, the authors redefine thought leadership as follows: “Knowledge from a trusted, eminent and authoritative source that is actionable and provides valuable solutions for stakeholders”. The authors find and explore nine tensions that developing thought leadership creates and propose a framework for understanding how to engage with thought leadership at the industry/macro, organisational/meso and individual/micro levels. The authors propose a research agenda based on testing propositions derived from new theories to explain thought leadership, including leadership, reducing risk, signalling quality and managing social networks, as well as examining the suggested ways to resolve different tensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to separate out thought leadership from its inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors show new organisational paradoxes within thought leadership and show how they can play out at different levels of analysis when implementing a thought leadership strategy. This work on thought leadership is set in a relatively under-explored context for knowledge management researchers, namely, knowledge-intensive professional service firms.