Search results

Small and mid‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are facing challenges in an increasingly fierce environment. This paper aims to explore the promise of information systems (IS) in enhancing the survival and competitiveness of SMEs in a dynamic environment. To address this issue, the paper draws upon the dynamic capability theory and develops a research model of IS‐enabled dynamic capabilities to examine the role of IS competence for enhancing SMEs dynamic capabilities in a competitive business environment.

An empirical study is conducted by using survey data from senior managers of 120 SMEs in China.

The analytic outcomes support the research model and confirm that IS competence significantly contributes to SMEs' dynamic capabilities for gaining competitive advantage.

This paper contributes to the literature on IS impact on dynamic capabilities of SMEs by incorporating IS competences into a research model of IS‐enabled dynamic capabilities and articulating the relationships between IS competences and dynamic capabilities of SMEs in a changing business environment. The research findings enrich dynamic capabilities theory by justifying IS as an enabling antecedent for organizational capability development. The findings may empirically convince SMEs owners and management to effectively invest in and deploy IS for enhancing SMEs' dynamic capabilities and performance.

A capability‐building perspective is used to examine how IS can leverage SMEs' capabilities to enhance their competitive advantage in a dynamic environment.

Organizational competences are essential sources of competitive advantage and thus are key drivers of competitive strategies for knowledge-intensive companies like automotive manufacturers. In order to cope with increasing market complexity and dynamism, reduced development times, and relentless cost pressures in a highly competitive environment, knowledge-driven companies need to understand how to be proactive in building and leveraging the competences they will need to be successful in the future, especially within their product development activities.

To help managers become proactive in identifying and building useful future competences, the dynamic and systemic perspectives of competence-based strategic management provide a framework for analysis that can help managers to look beyond their organization’s current competences and identify organizational competences that will be needed in the future. Competence theory emphasizes that an organization’s competences are dynamic and constantly need to be updated and reconfigured to adjust to the competitive dynamics of an industry. Any methodology for identifying future competence needs must begin with some means for identifying strategic gaps between the competences a firm has now and the competences it will need in the future. This paper describes a technology and market roadmap-based methodology for forecasting a firm’s future competence needs – the competences a firm will need to start developing now in order to meet expected market demands in the future. The methodology proposed here is applied and, we believe, validated through application to a competence planning process in a German luxury car manufacturer.

This introduction paper to the special issue on “The twenty‐first century knowledge‐based value drivers of innovation and sustainable development” aims to focus on such relationships between knowledge, learning, capabilities, innovation and competitive advantage in different forms of organization: businesses, clusters and regions. The purpose is to point out the conceptual pillars and contribute to the ongoing debate on: how knowledge assets impact organizational performance, what are the characteristics of such value‐generating processes, what factors affect the process of building organizational capabilities and distinctive competences, and how organizations translate specific capabilities into sustainable competitive advantages.

The article is based on a thorough analysis of the management literature addressing the nature, role and relevance of knowledge, organizational capabilities, learning and knowledge management for organization competitiveness. The conceptual background sets the foundations for a better understanding of the strategic importance of knowledge‐based value drivers for innovation and sustainable organizational value creation.

As knowledge management is establishing itself as a research discipline, it is fundamental to define the conceptual pillars grounding the application of knowledge management initiatives for innovation and business performance improvements. This paper provides a framework summarizing the key assumptions at the basis of understanding the strategic relevance of knowledge‐based value drivers for growth and competitiveness.

In addressing some of the questions posed, this article provides some implications for future research that build on different perspectives and emphasize the importance of adopting multi‐disciplinary approaches to disentangle the complexities of how organizations convert knowledge resources to a long‐lasting competitive advantage.

This editorial presents the key conceptual pillars explicating the role of knowledge resources as building blocks of organizational capabilities and how firms can develop and maintain their competences by promoting and nurturing learning processes. The value of this paper is the definition of a conceptual framework outlining the relationships between knowledge management, organizational capabilities, organizational learning and competitiveness.

Effective competence-based management (CBM) requires in the first instance an ability to identify an organization’s competences and the sources of those competences. Identifying competences can be especially challenging in the context of not-for-profit organizations, which have often been characterized as being “different” from for-profit organizations. In this paper we argue that not-for-profit organizations have fundamentally the same systemic requirements for survival and success as for-profit organizations – and therefore that not-for-profits ought to be amenable to competence identification and analysis through use of CBM concepts and theory in essentially the same way as for-profit organizations. We support this basic proposition through a case study of competence identification and analysis in a humanitarian relief organization (HRO), an increasingly important kind of not-for-profit organization.

This paper makes a contribution to the discussion on micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities – actions and interactions in organizations that enable continuous organizational renewal. More specifically, we propose the idea that dynamic capabilities of an organization are a positive function of corresponding dynamic capabilities of individual and collective actors in the organization. Further, we develop the assumption that not only individual acts of managers but also those of individuals and teams without managerial responsibility relate to dynamic capabilities of the organization. Following a holistic view, we also take into consideration empowering working conditions as an enhancing factor of this function. To examine these roots of dynamic capabilities, we use a multi-level model of competence provided by Wilkens, Keller, and Schmette (2006) that operationalizes the concept of dynamic capabilities provided by Teece (2007) on a concisely behavioral base. We investigated our hypotheses with a standardized questionnaire in a case study of a German plant engineering company with 112 participants and found primary support for our assumptions. Our results show an impact of individual dynamic capabilities on dynamic capabilities of the organization that is mediated by team dynamic capabilities. Psychological and social–structural empowerment moderated this relationship. A case-specific interpretation and implications for future research and practice are discussed.

The goal of this chapter is to explore the requirements modern companies expect of HR professionals’ competences.

Departing from the widely acknowledged HR competence studies of Ulrich and associates, we extended them with the continuous learning competence profile and HR professionals’ individual job performance. The empirical study is built on open interviews with HR leaders of ten large Dutch companies.

The study offers a new set of HRM competences. This set includes six HRM profiles: Business Focus, Learning Focus, Strategic Focus, HR Technology, HR Delivery, and Personal Credibility. Several contingency factors are thought to play a role in supporting these HRM competences: company culture, strategy, size, sector, scope, and position of HR professionals.

Based on these contributions, we recommended conducting a quantitative study to gain understanding of the relevance of the individual HRM job performance and to find associations between the HRM competences and the individual HRM job performance.

The focus of this chapter is a combination of HRM competences and the individual job performance of HR professionals.

This paper discusses common approaches and understanding of human resources management and development (HRM/HRD), especially pointing out the need for connecting HRM/HRD with strategic logic and objectives. A strategic capability based HRM model is presented. Strategic capability, directly and indirectly value adding professional competence, social capital, and their systemic relationships are discussed in more detail. Empirical studies dealing with relationships of the model are introduced in brief. Discussion is illustrated by examples from various industries.

This chapter addresses the call for identification of organizational contingencies related to a global mindset, exploration of different forms of a global mindset, and the relationship of global mindset with global strategies. To this end, the chapter explores global mindset development in the context of a three-year case study of middle managers in a Danish multinational corporation working with deliberate global mindset capability development as a vehicle for global strategy execution. The analysis of individual middle manager practices of a global mindset and associated organizational practices, as observed from a middle manager strategy implementation perspective, is condensed into four core aspects of individual-organizational practice that enables the enactment of global mindset: inclusive strategy co-creation, interactional synergy, imagined community building, and performance flexibility. On the basis of these learnings, the potentials and opportunities of applying a contextual, behavioral perspective on global mindset that incorporates both individual and organizational factors, as opposed to a generic, cognitive perspective, are discussed in terms of advancing knowledge of both the global mindset–performance causal chain and the practical impact of global mindset research.

From the organisational perspective, the authors know that management, including innovation management, becomes less “organised” by bureaucracy and administrative tools, and much more impacted by organisational capabilities, competences and hidden, “soft” routines, bringing innovation and creativity to the core of organisation. The purpose of this paper is to focus on competency sets for open innovation (OI) and is to provide recommendations for OI competency development in companies, linked to the core OI processes.

The research is exploratory and aims at theory-based practical indication combining deductive identification of competency clusters and inductive model development. Thus, the authors apply quantitative methods to data collection and analysis. The authors conducted an extensive literature review on competence challenges with regard to execution of OI, and empirical data analysis based on a large-scale structured industrial survey in Europe (N=264), leading to the development of competency sets for companies. SPSS tools are applied for empirical tests.

The authors develop a generic OI competency model applicable across industries, combined with organisational implications for sustaining OI management capabilities. The research clusters competencies based on the empirical analysis, which addresses the various challenges of OI, leading to recommendations for competency management in an OI context.

The data were collected from one key informant per company. Although the authors made efforts to ensure that this was a senior manager responsible for innovation, the authors cannot exclude some bias in the way that OI activities and related competencies are perceived. Exploratory nature of the research, which calls for a more systematic investigation of the OI activity modes and the OI competencies resulting competency model. In particular, the competencies could be tested on an inter-professional sample of employees with involvement in and/or responsibility for innovation, development, and HR management, as well as on leaders of innovating companies. Third, although significant in size for the analyses undertaken, the sample is not large enough to enable a more fine-tuned analysis of regional differences across Europe in the way that OI is managed through the development and implementation of competencies.

The research contributes to the OI management field with an outlined OI competency profile that can be implemented flexibly and tailored to individual firm’s needs. It brings indications for both further theory building and practice of innovation organisation, especially with regard to human resource development and organisational capability building for OI.

The social implications of the paper result from the contribution to innovation management competency development in OI regimes, which is an important tool for designing contemporary educational programmes, contributes to OI management sophistication in business which is especially important during the economy slowdown and search for new sources of growth and productivity, and supports firms productive engagement in OI ecosystems and collective technology upgrading towards higher societal benefits and stakeholder involvement.

An empirically grounded OI competency model is proposed with an implication to support human resource development for OI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no prior attempt to build such a model. The distinguished feature of the research is its extensive European coverage of 35 countries and multinational scope. The empirical validation strategy makes the research extremely relevant for management decisions related to human factors related OI capability development in organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how companies develop and acquire competences to capture the benefits of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies. The authors argue that this is a fundamental and often overlooked prerequisite for industrial transformation.

The authors conduct a process study of 33 small- and medium-sized companies engaged in the transformation of a manufacturing industry from the different perspectives of manufacturers or manufacturing solution providers.

Key findings indicate a strong link between the specific competence development approach, the specific intricacies of the application domain and the process outcomes. On this basis, a competence development framework is proposed.

The conclusions are drawn from a Danish population of companies in the manufacturing industry and are based on particular contingencies, such as low volume/high mix, high skill, low tech and high cost. However, the findings are believed to be applicable across different sets of contingencies where the need to combine legacy and emerging technologies is present, and where the human factor is central to leveraging technology beyond predefined supplier specifications.

In a time of extraordinary investments in the manufacturing of technologies in support of digital transformation, the development of strategic and operational competences to support these investments is lagging behind. This paper develops a conceptual outset for closing this gap.

The research is based on the fundamental argument that to efficiently apply new technology, a strategic approach to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills is required. The empirical research demonstrates that new skills and knowledge are often assumed to follow automatically from the use of new technologies. However, we demonstrate that this perspective in fact limits the ability to capture the potential benefits ascribed to I4.0 technologies. The authors propose that the competence strategy needs to be expansive and cover not only the technological competences but also the organizational- and individual-level competences. These results add to our understanding of how the digital transformation of manufacturing companies unfolds.