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The purpose of this paper is to report on lab experiments conducted to determine what impact managerial top-down knowledge transfer has on a middle manager’s individual ambidexterity and decision performance.

The authors designed an experimental approach using a business simulator to test the hypotheses with middle managers. The methodological approach provides the authors with a framework to enhance the middle manager’s understanding of how to attain superior short-term financial results by exploiting current resources, in addition to mastering new strategies to avoid a potential business bankruptcy.

The results suggest that top-down managerial knowledge inflow benefits middle manager strategic decision making, as well as his/her short- and long-term performance. Nonetheless, the best short-term results were achieved by those middle managers that mastered both exploitation and exploration activities simultaneously.

The contribution of this paper is to identify and test a control mechanism called top-down inflows that enhance middle manager’s ability to exploit current resources to increase financial performance, and exploring new strategies to avoid a business bankruptcy.

Previous studies on innovation tend to view innovation as consisting of a creative phase of novel and useful ideas, and a non-creative, or at least a less creative phase, as this considered to be the mere implementation and validation of the initially created ideas. In contrast, this paper aims to stress on the significance of the process of validating a new idea as being a creative, learning, exploratory process that shapes the degree of novelty of the innovation as a whole.

In driving this argument, this study deductively builds on a theoretical pre-understanding derived from extant literature related to management innovation and organizational legitimacy, and inductively draws on information gleaned from three in-depth case studies.

The study shows that the validation phase in the innovation process is a creative process, rather than just being a set of activities that relate to the mere execution of the created ideas. Viewing the validation process as an exploratory search for new knowledge, this study establishes a relationship between the form of knowledge mobilized, vertically within an organization or horizontally from outside, and the form of legitimation required. Validation based on internally generated knowledge is effective in terms of achieving pragmatic (efficiency-driven) objectives. Inter-organizational knowledge inflows are associated with cognitive legitimacy – a form of legitimacy that leads to changes in the stakeholders’ beliefs about a the product. In contradistinction, horizontal, socio–cultural inflows of knowledge are likely to improve on the product itself, thereby generating more traction for validation.

This research is based on data collected from three firms only.

The idea developed here can provide business organizations a better understanding of the validation process of management innovations. This study suggests that successful innovation often requires managers to be prepared to seek knowledge beyond the confines of their own organizations.

This study contributes in three ways: it submits that there is a dynamic interplay between the moments of creation and validation, which is largely shaped by the novelty of the mobilized knowledge, depending on whether it is internal top–down or external horizontal; relatedly, the effectiveness of validation is shaped by the novelty of the knowledge garnered to justify the initial ideas; and the present paper has extended Suchman’s (1995) framework by linking the effectiveness of the various forms of legitimacy to the source of knowledge mobilized in the validation process.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical and empirical exploration of link between organization intellectual capital and knowledge flows with its incremental and radical innovation performance.

This paper adopts relevant literature of social capital and organizational learning to examine the impact of intellectual capital and knowledge flows on incremental and radical innovation based on surveying 95 firms. To test the research hypotheses, regression analysis is used.

Results of the study show that human capital and top-down knowledge flows significantly and positively influence both incremental and radical innovations. Social capital and bottom-up knowledge flows do not have any significant impact on incremental or/and radical innovation. Organizational capital has a positive impact on incremental innovation as expected.

The results offer several practical implications for business managers to harvest its knowledge bases resident in the firm’s different forms appropriately to make innovation successful. Particularly, knowledge resident in human capital and organizational capital is useful for making incremental innovation. Especially, new knowledge, new skills and new perspectives resident in human capital are crucial important for making radical innovation. Both incremental and radical innovations are positively influenced by dynamic managerial capabilities.

This study contributes to literature by providing new evidence linking organization intellectual capital and knowledge flows with its innovation performance. Especially, the missing link between top-down knowledge flows and radical innovation is empirically examined. Value of this study is that social capital and bottom-up knowledge flows are not universally beneficial for enhancing innovation and their impacts on innovation performance are context dependent and more sophisticated than it is recognized in the literature.

Ambidexterity is the ability of an organization to balance exploitation and exploration. Ambidextrous organizations perform better in managing productivity-innovation dilemma. Although the literature on ambidexterity has expanded, much less attention has been paid to the antecedents of ambidexterity. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of ambidexterity and develop a multi-level taxonomy of the antecedents.

Based on an extensive review of the literature, the paper develops criteria for categorizing the antecedents and then develops a taxonomy of the antecedents.

Two taxonomy frameworks have been developed: one is based on infrastructural elements, including organizational structures, processes, and context, while the other is based on different organizational levels (i.e. organizational, group, and individual) at which different antecedents exist. Most of the antecedents of ambidexterity reported in the literature fall in the category of “processes” – both individual/social and technical/procedural.

The paper provides an enhanced understanding of the antecedents of ambidexterity, how they relate to each other, and how they can be grouped together. The framework can help managers to apply the antecedents at various organizational levels, resulting in a more structured approach to ambidexterity.

The key contribution of the paper is in providing a multi-level understanding of the antecedents of ambidexterity. To the best of the author’s knowledge, such a taxonomy of the antecedents of ambidexterity has not been provided in previous publications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge inflows and outflows interact to affect performance outcomes. Though previous studies have dealt with knowledge inflows and outflows, the quality and quantity characteristics of knowledge are often not taken into account, thus leaving a research gap with regards to the effect of their interactions on performance outcomes.

Based on Poisson regression analysis, this quantitative study fills the aforementioned research gaps by analyzing the ambidextrous configurations of knowledge flows from an ambidexterity perspective and examines their effects on two-phase performance (i.e. regular season and playoffs), using a longitudinal data set of National Basketball Association transactions from the 2003-2004 to 2014-2015 season.

The results suggest that the complementarity between knowledge inflows and outflows along the quality and quantity dimensions of knowledge, respectively, has a positive impact on two-phase performance, while the imbalance between knowledge inflows and outflows under the quality and quantity dimensions of knowledge, respectively, has a negative impact on playoffs performance (Phase 2). These findings suggest that organizations can balance knowledge inflows and outflows under a single quality or quantity dimension of knowledge. Furthermore, the interaction between the quantity of the inflows of knowledge and the quality of the outflows of knowledge and the interaction between the quality of the inflows of knowledge and the quantity of the outflows of knowledge are both positively related to two-phase performance. These findings suggest that organizations can balance knowledge inflows and outflows across quality and quantity dimensions of knowledge. Finally, the effects of the interaction between knowledge inflows and outflows on playoffs performance are greater than regular-season.

Organizations should leverage ambidexterity to manage/balance knowledge inflows and outflows across quality and quantity dimensions, further enhancing performance outcomes.

This study, first, provides new insights into knowledge flows by distinguishing between the quality and quantity of knowledge, the inflows and outflows of knowledge, constructing ambidextrous configurations of knowledge flows from an ambidexterity perspective. Second, it contributes to the relationship between knowledge flows and organizational performance by revealing how ambidextrous configurations of knowledge flows exert different effects on performance outcomes. Third, it adds to the literature of ambidexterity-performance relationships and expands it to the context of sports.

The purpose of this study is to explore the agile project management (APM) approach through the contextual ambidextrous lens by overcoming the traditional perspective that separates projects within the opposite planned-exploitation- and emergent-exploration-oriented forms.

This study uses a grounded approach to five different agile-oriented companies for discovering how agile adoption shows both emergent (exploration-oriented) and planned (exploitation-oriented) tensions in a perspective that connects, rather than separates, them.

This study discovers five main categories, namely, approach, objectives, boundaries, leadership and feedback, that capture the tensions between planned and emergent issues of agile projects. The identified variables interact with different intervening conditions of the APM attributes (i.e. road map, product backlog, team backlog and solution delivery), activating different response actions (“exploitation embedded in exploration” and vice-versa), requiring, as a consequence, the need for contextual ambidexterity.

This study identifies different implications based on real project contexts, as the importance of a more complete picture of the APM approach, which also considers the combination of planned and emergent aspects of projects and, as consequence, the needs for dual capacities (T-shaped skills) both at project management and team levels.

This study identifies, in real project contexts, the relevance of integration between the corporate level and the agile project team. This implies the search for constant dialogue, with feedback exchange spread across all levels, also enabled by an integrated leadership approach.

This study highlights agile tensions in a real-world project context by describing how APM connects both explorative and exploitative aspects of change within the same APM initiative, in order to manage such tensions, which differs from previous studies that consider APM in alternation with a linear project management approach as stage-gate.

This study focuses on establishing relations with some important but underestimated elements of knowledge dynamics and firm orientations to characterize organizational circular economy activities through eco-innovation (EIN). The advent of the circular economy (CE) in this post-pandemic era has brought unpredictable sustainable challenges for the manufacturing industries. This research paper aims to bring more clarity to the extant literature on the relationship between environmental innovation (EI) and CE.

In this study, a systematic literature review methodology was used to research the determinants of EI in the knowledge environment that drives the implementation of a CE.

This paper proposes a framework that articulates organizational learning and orientation dynamics and offers a new set of internal knowledge resources for a corporate CE. It is found that change toward CE requires connection with EI. However, successful CE growth largely depends on leveraging knowledge resources and orientation dynamics (stakeholder orientation, sustainability orientation, organization learning orientation and entrepreneurial orientation). CE techniques are still in their early phases of adoption and their implementation is still in its development. Circular knowledge economy (CKE) has the potential to be a useful alternative to achieving thriving CE to achieve sustainability in local and global businesses operations.

This study helps companies to understand the organizational learning and different orientation dynamics for achieving CE principles. The research findings imply that EI is critical in establishing a sustainable transition toward CE through organizational learning and orientation dynamics and has garnered significant attention from academics, public policymakers and practitioners. The proposed framework can guide managers to develop sustainable policies related to the CE. This research recognizes that firm-level CKE is important in shaping how knowledge resources relate to CE within transition management literature.

This paper abridges the knowledge gap in identifying key drivers and presents the current eminence, challenges and prognostications of sustainable EI parameters in the changing climate of CE. This study builds a framework that combines insights from different viewpoints and disciplines and extends one’s understanding of the relationship between EI and CE. From a theoretical perspective, this study explains the knowledge management complexity links between EI and CE. It builds a theoretical bridge between EI and CE to illustrate how firms transition toward CE following the recommendations. Thus, researchers should continue to support their research with appropriate theories that have the potential to explain EI and CE relationship phenomena, with a particular emphasis on some promising but underutilized theories such as organizational learning, dynamic capabilities and stakeholder theories.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the knowledge base on how performance measurement drives improvements in healthcare practice.

The study is based on a single in-depth case study. The critical incident technique (CIT) has been applied in order to identify significant occurrences of performance measurement in terms of events, incidents, processes, and issues identified by respondents from the case organization. These critical incidents have been analysed and interpreted using a theoretical framework suggesting that performance measurement may be applied for exploratory or regulatory purposes as well as ad hoc or continuously in healthcare practice.

The study suggests that performance measurement may be a versatile method for driving improvement in healthcare organizations. Six types of activities directly or indirectly drive improvement in the clinical department: continuous follow-up in formal arenas and meetings; improvement work; professional efforts; goal deployment; reporting based on external demands; and creating awareness in everyday clinical work. Healthcare organizations that strive to practice performance measurement as a driver for improvement need to find infrastructures in which it is being integrated into the daily life of organizational healthcare practice.

The study provides an original account of the prerequisites and actions for driving improvement through performance measurement in a healthcare setting. Since the operations management perspective in healthcare is significantly lacking, the study offers a unique perspective which may be the basis for both practice development and further scholarly inquiry and theory development.

This study aims to analyze how corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives address sustainability challenges by focusing on the congruence between process and outcome variables of CSR.

Following a theory-driven model, a content analysis was conducted on 63 award-winning social responsibility projects.

The study reveals that the adoption of a proactive approach during environmental assessment, which manifests itself in a focus on emerging sustainability challenges with a deeper interest, affects the centrality of social responsibility initiative by increasing its learning and partnership potential and leads organizations to produce radical innovations.

The findings provide a valuable understanding for practitioners on organizing the decision making process of CSR initiatives in order to unlock its learning potentials.

Radically innovative projects with their higher levels of proactivity, centrality and generalizability are better than incremental ones at transferring and integrating company resources and capabilities to address emergent sustainability challenges.

The impact of CSR on society and nature has been a neglected area of literature. To reduce this gap, this study analyzes how the configuration of process variables shapes the outcomes of socially responsible initiatives on sustainability. It also provides a new typology on the relevance of CSR initiatives to company mission/model that can show how CSR can unlock organizational learning and innovation potentials.

Previous research has considered human motivation as a determinant of inquisitiveness, learning and innovation. However, how student’s motivation affects both exploitative/exploratory research outcomes has not yet been sufficiently addressed. The purpose of this paper is to examine self-determination theory (SDT) as a conceptual tool to understand post-graduate student’s academic motivation and how it affects two types of ambidextrous outcomes (exploitative and exploratory), and thus posit relational capital as an important mediator in the motivation–innovation process.

The authors draw conclusions using 331 valid post-graduate foreign scholars data collected via online survey in three Chinese Universities and conduct data analysis using the structural equation modeling technique (AMOS).

Results indicate that: academic motivation and perceived collaboration capability both has a significant effect on exploitation behavior; there was no significant relationship between academic motivation and tendency to collaborate with actors within their networks; collaboration capability and exploitation behavior mediate the relationship between academic motivation and exploration behavior; and further a complementary link was found to exist between exploitation behavior and exploration behavior in students attempt to be ambidextrous.

The authors advance innovation research by expanding SDT to include relational perspective as an antecedent of ambidexterity (exploration/exploitation behaviors) and provide new insights into current understanding of research engagement in higher education settings. The authors highlight some implications for educational agencies seeking to promote the emergence of psychological and relational conditions to enhance novelty in post-graduate internationalized education.