Search results

The aim of this paper is to interpret the concept of a business model from the pattern of coordination mechanisms used by an Italian wine cooperative to manage its inter-organizational relationships.

The business model is taken as the structure and governance of the relationships between the focal firm and its exchange partners. The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative investigation, analyzing material collected at the Farming Cooperative Gran Cru.

Several different coordination mechanisms were used to rethink the firm customer value proposition, showing a very complex and dynamic inter-organizational system: process control mechanisms, knowledge suppliers and clan control mechanisms. The combination of mechanisms enables the firm to govern the extreme complexity of external complementarities and interdependence among activities and resources.

The study is particularly helpful to managers because wine entrepreneurs and managers can influence their networks’ features and strategies, as well as the mechanisms for governance of the relationships and extracting customer value.

The study seeks to enrich the debate on the strategy/structure fit by shifting the focus from the organizational to inter-organizational level of analysis. The analysis centers on boundary-spanning relationships between one wine firm and its partners and knowledge suppliers. This perspective brings business model analysis and inter-organizational design closer because variables of the business model – such as customer value – can be seen as combinations of inter-organizational coordination mechanisms.

In this paper, we depart from extant conceptualisations of knowledge translation mechanisms to examine projects as a way to achieve effective knowledge transfer. Our empirical analysis focused on a university–industry research project in the automotive industry.

The empirical analysis was based on a qualitative investigation. We analysed material collected within a research project involving a partnership between two universities and Fiat-Chrysler Automotive (FCA), a multi-brand auto manufacturer with a product range covering several different market segments. We used three data collection techniques: internal document analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews.

Our findings show that, in a U-I research project, goals represent a key dimension to support knowledge translation. Defining the goal implies an ongoing negotiation process, where researchers and company employees work together, in order to converge towards a shared meaning of the goal. In this sense, goal orientation and goal-based interaction have significant implications for knowledge translation processes.

Studies to date have focussed on the concept of knowledge translation as a way to contextualise the transfer from the source of knowledge to the receiver and to interpret the knowledge to be exchanged. This study expands the understanding of knowledge translation mechanisms in university–industry research settings. It investigates the concept of projects as powerful knowledge translation mechanism in a dynamic and longitudinal perspective. Our contribution provides insight, reflecting on how the use of projects may represent a way to facilitate knowledge transfer and build up new ideas and solutions.

The paper focuses on how knowledge visualization supports the development of a particular multiobjective decision-making problem as a portfolio optimization problem in the context of interorganizational collaboration between universities and a large automotive company. This paper fits with the emergent knowledge visualization literature because it helps to explain decision-making related to the development of a multiobjective optimization model in Lean Product Development settings. We investigate how using ad hoc visual tools supports knowledge translation and knowledge sharing, enhancing managerial judgment and decision-making.

The empirical case in this study concerns the setting up of a multiobjective decision-making model as a portfolio optimization problem to analyze and select alternatives for upgrading the lean production process quality at an FCA plant.

The study shows how knowledge visualization and the associated tools work to enable knowledge translation and knowledge sharing, supporting decision-making. The empirical findings show why and how knowledge visualization can be used to foster knowledge translation and sharing among individuals and from individuals to groups. Knowledge visualization is understood as both a collective and interactional process and a systematic approach where different players translate their expertise, share a framework and develop common ground to support decision-making.

From a theoretical perspective, the paper expands the understanding of knowledge visualization as a system of practices that support the development of a multiobjective decision-making method. From an empirical point of view, our results may be useful to other firms in the automotive industry and for academics wishing to develop applied research on portfolio optimization.

This paper aims to study knowledge integration mechanisms in an interdisciplinary research project. It develops the theoretical literature on the concept of knowledge integration, particularly the adoption of different organizational mechanisms. The research helps to explain how to adopt different integration mechanisms in the various steps of a typical university industry research project.

This research relies on a case study. The authors used three data collection techniques: internal document analysis, observation/site visits and semi-structured interviews. Documentary analysis was used to understand the organizational structure and to identify knowledge integration issues. Observation and site visits at university research laboratories were used to increase understanding on particular issues. Staff interviewed included managers and academic researchers.

Findings are primarily related to a better understanding of choices of knowledge integration mechanisms in a university industry research project. A crucial aspect was the level of mutual understanding of specialist knowledge. When project members were derived from different sides of the university-industry border, there was a major need for recurring to more structured knowledge integration mechanisms, even if the scientific background of participants was homogeneous.

Previous studies on the relationships between university and industry deals with the issue of governing the knowledge exchange on the border at a macro level; conversely, an interesting research gap is represented by knowledge integration mechanisms to be deployed on the university-industry border, especially at micro level. In this paper, the authors do not cope explicitly with university-industry coordination mechanisms but use the University-Industry border to study knowledge integration in interdisciplinary setting. The study is exploratory, which may be useful in generating future research hypotheses, connecting the features of research projects with the need to achieve knowledge integration.

This article sets out to investigate the relationship between performance management systems (PMSs) and knowledge in public universities. In particular, this paper intends to verify how different choices related to PMS affect the nature of knowledge, in terms of the well‐known tacit vs explicit dichotomy.

The empirical focus is on the recent PMS changes that have been developing in the “modernisation agenda” of the Italian public sector. In particular, 15 case studies of PMS design in Italian universities are presented. The interpretation of the results is based on the Simon's theoretical framework related to the four levers of control.

Results show how PMSs (in the different forms presented in the universities’ evaluation plans) could represent an important social tool to facilitate the management of organizational knowledge, combining explicit and tacit forms of knowledge.

This paper tackles a topic neglected in the knowledge management literature, aiming to open up a discussion on the possible interconnections between PMSs and knowledge in the public arena.

This paper aims to consider how and to what extent it is possible to interpret a performance management system (PMS) as a typical control mechanism or in a more innovative way as a learning tool. PMSs are typically used for planning and coordination purposes. However, they may also be used as an opportunity to foster learning inside the organization.

The empirical analysis was carried out during January-May 2014. A single case study was developed, in the first phase, through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with three top managers, to investigate the purpose and rationale of the design of the PMS. The investigation then continued with non-participant observation.

The picture shows the dominance of “command and control” thinking, based on a cybernetic control system connected to targets and linking the achievement of these targets to individual performance.

This paper helps to contextualize reflections on PMSs and potential learning outcomes in knowledge organizations, with specific reference to the airport industry.

This paper contributes to the extant debate on the relationship between PMSs and learning. Traditionally, the literature has focused only on particular aspects of PMSs. Other authors, relying on a contingent approach, have instead put forward the need of a more comprehensive and integrated frameworks encompassing organic conception of PMSs, as well as of the interdependencies among their components. In the case study under scrutiny in this paper, adaptive or single-loop learning is taking place, in which adaptive changes occur but do not lead to any major changes.

The purpose of this paper is to interpret employees’ resistance using the perspective of a Foucaultian/post-structuralist approach in critical management studies. The authors examine the relationship between management of diversity, based on employment contract, emotional construction of identity and processes of resistance. The authors explore the ways in which temporary agency nurses understand and experience their contract, respond to tensions regarding temporary employment, develop collective emotions and show processes of resistance.

The study adopted an interpretive and qualitative approach. The authors analysed empirical material collected in the Haematology Department of a hospital in Naples, Italy, to illustrate actual experiences in the workplace.

Fear turns out to be the discursive resource through which resistance is actually exerted. Through emotions, temporary nurses build a community of coping and enhance their collective identity. They use fear to develop solidarity and to mobilize collective resistance in the workplace. Although no traditional resistance behaviours are reported, they aim to undermine the reputation of top managers and challenge and re-write the prevailing discourses of the organization.

The paper contributes to the critical literature because the authors analysed a relationship that is rarely theoretically and empirically examined in literature, that between employment contract, collective identity-building dynamics and processes of resistance. We showed that the creation of a community of coping enabled minorities to voice their distance from and opposition to management.

This study aims at exploring the characteristics of the Temporary Project Networks (TPNs) in small and medium‐sized wine producing enterprises, both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective. It aims to discuss different types of temporary inter‐firm collaboration clusters both in terms of structural/organizational features and in terms of innovation tasks development. It also aims to develop an empirically derived taxonomy of TPNs within the Sannio wine industry.

The paper focuses on the literature supporting the argument that the act of innovating is related strongly with the creation of new knowledge. In particular, the knowledge‐based theory places primary emphasis on inter‐organizational knowledge exchanges in explaining enhanced knowledge creation toward better innovative outcomes. The design of forms of coordination between companies is investigated with reference to TPNs, a form of collaboration that has been less investigated in the literature, especially with respect to small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The survey concerned 40 SMEs operating in wine production in Sannio, one of the most promising areas of the Campania region and the entire Italian economic system. The research is based on the use of different quantitative instruments (administration of structured questionnaires and statistical analysis) and qualitative instruments (semi‐structured interviews of management, analysis of information material, reports as well as planning documents of the companies involved in the analysis). A cluster analysis has been carried out to identify TPN typologies.

The study finds that the different kinds of inter‐organizational collaborations lead to two‐cluster solutions that refer to two of the TPNs models formalised by Bakker et al. The findings add to the view that there is variation in types of project network and go against the often held idea that temporary projects are by definition short‐termed and focused on non‐routine tasks.

The study was able to expand the understanding of TPNs and innovation in two respects. First, it should be noted that only a few studies have adopted the TPN framework to investigate the inter‐organizational coordination mechanisms among SMEs. This study could usefully find its place in this literature gap, thus contributing to develop a typological research in order to identify TPN clusters with homogeneous distinctive characteristics. Secondly, the study has an explorative role of analysis, which can be useful for generating research hypotheses in future works, connecting the features of TPNs with the development of innovation processes.

Acknowledging the strategic relevance of assessing and managing intellectual capital (IC), this editorial first aims to discuss a classification of the IC assessment strategies and second seeks to introduce the main topics investigated by the papers collected in this special issue. The notion of IC assessment strategy is interpreted as the set of economic and managerial decisions and purposes characterising the assessment of an organisation's knowledge assets. It is argued that the definition of a knowledge asset assessment strategy has to take into account two dimensions: on the one hand, the nature of the managerial approach to be adopted for the assessment, distinguishing between “value management” and “value communication”; and on the other hand, the most appropriate “evaluation architecture” to be used in order to gather and report the assessment information for control and decision making.

The approaches, evidences and insights discussed in this introduction result from the integration of the theory analysis with the insights extracted from the discussions that took place at the conference “International Forum on Knowledge Assets Dynamics” organized in June 2012 in Matera, Italy. At this leading international conference, experts discussed the importance of intellectual capital for organizational business excellence in the 21st century business landscape, the new IC key‐value drivers to focus on in order to face emergent competitive challenges, and the research and management practices most appropriate to address complexity, uncertainty and changes of today's business landscape.

Four IC assessment strategies are proposed, addressing their relevance for management actions. This represents the background to introduce the main topics investigated by the papers that are collected in this special issue.

This editorial outlines the key IC assessment strategies that organisations and practitioners should take into account when designing measurement systems aimed at gathering information to inform IC management actions.