Search

The purpose of the paper was to illustrate and substantiate specific approach to innovation potential measurement by means of the complex indicator. The approach to the construction of the index was supported by qualitative research that included questionnaire survey, contextual interviews and case studies. The sample consisted of more than 50 Czech companies the size of which varied from middle to big ones. This research was complemented by semi-structured interviews conducted with innovation managers and specialist. The research resulted in the construction of the complex index ('index') that is suitable for the measurement of company innovation indicator. The model was validated by testing the index on the example of 15 companies. The research was aimed at the elaboration of complex innovation index that would include all relevant factors and enable measuring company innovation potential. The main practical implication was software-based application that facilitates the calculation of innovation potential index was developed. The paper consolidates factors that are essential for company innovation potential measurement into one complex indicator that is easy to interpret. No similar approach has been addressed yet. The paper brings clarity to the issue of measuring innovation potential in companies. It also offers solution to this problem.

Industry 4.0 describes the phenomenon when wireless connectivity augments business processes. It not only improves work processes but also is radically impact business models. However, there is a paucity of scholarly enquiry in this field, especially the economic efficiencies to be obtained. This article analyses scientific publications related to an efficiency assessment and business models of Industry 4.0, approaches the dynamic efficiency and develops a conceptual framework that assess the efficiency of transformed and disrupted business models. The paper is based upon a systematic review of scientific publications indexed in clarivate analytics and evaluation by experts. Research revealed a lack of holistic assessment of efficiency of business models and its parts in the current literature. It also focuses on the impact of efficiencies at the enterprise, societal and environmental level. The paper makes recommendations for managers and policymakers at a national level on the assessment of efficiencies derived from Industry 4.0 to the whole society. The research has several limitations: literature review only in clarivate analytics limit from recent results; very rare publications include a multidisciplinary approach to cover social and environmental aspects; and most researches use historical data and does not use ex-ante approach.

This paper focuses on employees' training and development as a significant factor facilitating knowledge transfer. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of employee training and development on tacit knowledge transfer mediated via interpersonal trust. The target population of this study are employees from the telecommunications sector (n = 175). Mediation analyses were conducted, the multiplied regression method and simple mediation model with bootstrapping were applied to analyse the data according to mediation analysis. Cronbach alpha and McDonald's omega are used to verify data reliability. This paper finds that training and development influences tacit knowledge transfer and interpersonal trust mediates this relationship. The results showed that training and development has a positive and significant relationship with tacit knowledge transfer, mediated via interpersonal trust. These findings supported the importance of competency development and employee training as a facilitating condition for effective tacit knowledge dissemination on the basis of mutual trust.

With growing pressures to modernise the value chain, rationalise operations and minimise costs, a firm's logistics and knowledge management systems require continuous renewal. This paper examines inter relationships between logistic and firm's knowledge management from a value concept. A value concept is a useful construct to ascertain the contingent factors of logistics and firm's knowledge and how they are interrelated. We asked the question: what happens to a firm's logistic operations and knowledge resources when it decides to outsource business functions? This paper draws on logistics, supply chain and knowledge theories to introduce a conceptual framework of firm's logistic and knowledge value. Using this value concept, our analysis offers insights into managerial practices and an agenda for future research for a deeper understanding of the connection between logistic and knowledge management functions. We postulate that firm's logistics and knowledge are intrinsically connected and the outsourcing of logistics invariably alter a firm's value.

This paper explores the links between the fields of dynamic capabilities and organisational learning (OL), emphasising the role of the different ontological learning levels. The resource-based view (RBV) is pinpointed as the key origin of the dynamic capabilities view (DCV), in connection with OL and knowledge management. Ontological learning levels are identified as key OL stages. The knowledge-based view (KBV) of the firm is introduced as a key link between OL processes and dynamic capabilities development. Specifically, we propose a novel and integrative framework for understanding the role that the RBV, the DCV, OL, and the KBV, have, in an inter-connected way, have played in achieving a progressively deeper understanding of the key internal sources of competitive advantage. Accordingly, our paper opens interesting opportunities for future inquiry, e.g., studying how different ontological learning levels may distinctively influence the development of particular types of dynamic capabilities (e.g., in design, marketing, etc.).

Today's society consists of individuals who belong to different generations. Natural change will lead to the fact that a new generation of individuals will take up most of the society's structure, at the same time raising questions about behaviour in virtual space changes. Assimilation of new technologies in society greatly depends on consumer attitudes that are determined by the psychological characteristics of consumers. Purpose of the paper is to form a conceptual psychological profile of generation Z, which would create preconditions to adapt the electronic service solutions for the youngest generation of society. Features of the Theory of generations and psychological characteristics of the generation Z will be analysed in order to achieve this goal. Guidelines of information technologies (IT) solutions for adaptation for generation Z will be given due to established profile. This paper is based on analysis of scientific and practical literature, systematisation, comparison, graphical representation of information.

This paper reports the process of informal learning in the pre-consulting phase in management-consulting firms in Indonesia. As the consulting industry significantly grows in Indonesia, more organisations use consultant services to improve their business. Pre-consulting is an important phase to define the right solutions, which involves a lot of informal learning activities. More, team diversity and client's uncertainty also influence this phase and lead to team conflict and impact to team performance. After developing a conceptual exploration based on several key constructs and their interrelationship, this paper uses empirical examples of actual consulting firms to study. A qualitative study of observation and semi in-depth interviews to six informants representing four medium size-consulting firms in Jakarta were done. This paper suggests that a team can create innovative solutions to the prospective clients and get the project if they can learn informally and manage the conflict caused by team diversity and client' uncertainty.

This paper is based on work done at IdeaSquare, a new innovation experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The paper explores the translation of fundamental research into societal applications with the help of multidisciplinary student teams, project- and problem-based learning and design thinking methods. The theme is approached through challenge based innovation (CBI), a pilot course coordinated by IdeaSquare in 2013-2014 in collaboration with three universities. The approach, including a visit to CERN, appears to motivate the participating students to really strong, self-directed learning and can produce new, innovative concepts for societal applications with an inspirational connection to CERN. As a result of their iterative development, the student teams created two concepts: EDUMIND to help autistic kids to communicate through augmented reality technology, and CMPRSSD to use advanced data processing to record and compress project meetings. Both of the projects were also developed further by their stakeholders after the course.

Sustainable economic development is an aspiration of every nation in today's knowledge economy. Scientists for a few decades claim that intellectual capital management is the answer how to reach this goal. Currently, benchmarking methodology is the most common approach in the national intellectual capital measurement intended to provide information for management purposes. The aim of this paper is to identify advantages and disadvantages of this methodological approach and provide the answer to the question whether it is the most appropriate one. The most popular methods based on the benchmarking methodology (NICI, ICM, ICI, NIC40, ELSS) are analysed and compared within the paper. Advantages and disadvantages of benchmarking are thoroughly investigated with regard to measurement objectives, validity and applicability of the results as well as other contextual characteristics. Findings of the paper reveal that application of NIC benchmarking needs clearly defined particular purpose and must be handled with a great caution.

This paper draws on Jean-Francois Lyotard's (1984) seminal study The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge to reflect on two macro-level catastrophes: the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2009 (and its continuing effects throughout the Eurozone and elsewhere) and Fukushima. These two case studies probe aspects of these grand failures to reveal serious deficiencies in integrity at work, the changing nature of contemporary working relationships, knowledge management and fashionable new approaches to organisational learning. The paper deploys Lyotard's ‘performativity theory’ to examine how people in commercial enterprises may often define ‘knowledge’, how this is transferred and how, in turn, managing this knowledge affects working relationships, learning and change.

This paper is an output of a Portuguese public research project: DeSid - "design as a company's strategic resource: a study of the impacts of design" (FCT). The DeSid research project was created with the main purpose to make a diagnosis of the use of design inside the Portuguese manufacturing industry. This paper refers to one of the activities of that research project: the national survey to the Portuguese manufacturing industry. The main drivers for the use of design in the companies are the 'image/reputation' followed by the 'innovation ability'. The relationship between design and innovation is relevant for the majority of firms. From a brief analysis of the survey results it is also possible to acknowledge that Portuguese firms in general still underestimate the potential of design as a strategic resource.

The notions of user involvement and user orientation have become popular catchphrases in innovation research and practice. Central in this research are the ideas that knowledge about users leads to better design, and that the interests of users and producers need to be aligned. In another field of research, scholars have long recognised the significance of metaphors for integrative pursuits. However, to date these two literatures have not been combined into an integrated framework. Producing such a framework for understanding the process of interest alignment is the main task of this paper. Illustrating the framework with a recent probiotic innovation process, this paper argues that learning to match type of boundary – syntactic, semantic and pragmatic – faced between users and producers with type of capability is crucial for bringing about successful user-producer integration. This paper also argues that learning to blend forms a central part of the semantic capability.

Multiple contexts shape team activities and how they learn, and group learning is a dynamic construct that reflects a repertoire of potential behaviour. The purpose of this developmental paper is to examine how better learning behaviours in semi–autonomous teams improves the level of team adaptability and performance. The discussion suggests that learning behaviour enables the team to better respond to critical uncertain contexts which in turn improves team adaptability. The overriding theme of the paper is that better team adaptability leads to higher team performance; learning behaviour provides the means by which teams and their members are more adaptable in responding to different contexts. The paper develops a number of hypotheses. The need to understand the link between multiple uncertainty contexts, team adaptability and team learning is important in improving team performance indicating a significant research gap.

This paper considers the concept of space and its role in both knowledge creation and overcoming knowledge stickiness. Aristotelian concepts of 'freedom to' and 'freedom from' are used to reconceptualise space. Informal and formal spaces, concepts and places are discussed as both specific locations and as gaps providing space for knowledge development. Qualitative case data indicates that there are three types of space which need to be considered: physical, mental and virtual, as well as a range of reasons why space alone is not enough to support knowledge creation and learning. In the paper it is argued that recognising these areas and developing them in a managed way could overcome inherent organisational learning and knowledge creation barriers.

Organisations worldwide have acknowledged the connection between corporate learning, development and business sustainability. Emphasis is being laid on creating and designing a learning organisation "that is skilled at creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring and retaining knowledge" [Garvin, (2000), p.32]. Extensive literature exists about the successful implementation of the learning organisation design by numerous companies globally. However, the appropriateness of the ideology of learning organisation and its concepts globally, has so far been neglected [with the exception of Jackson (2004)]. This paper investigates the appropriateness and effectiveness of the learning organisation model in the African continent. The paper explores the various dimensions and characteristics of the learning organisation model to provide insights on any problematic concerns relating to the effective governance of these contemporary models. The paper bases its critical discussion and analysis of learning organisations including its negative consequences on empirical evidence obtained from a case study in Botswana.

This paper shows the implementation of '5S' – a Japanese concept of housekeeping – through action research methodology. The organisational issue it tackles is the cultural inhibition among the Indian population against cleaning. It uses soft systems methodology (SSM), action science and Schein's idea of clinical enquiry to bring about an enduring change against this inhibition. On a theoretical level, this paper develops a model which integrates these three approaches to organisational change. It argues that it is possible to integrate these approaches based on the nature of feedback loop which can be termed as hard, soft, emanicipatory, and therapeutic churning.

This paper aims at testing a conceptual model connecting variables of the internal and external work environment to ITES/BPO employee turnover. Based on the gaps identified from the literature that no single model explains in a comprehensive way as to why, people choose to leave and the lack of turnover studies on call centers located in India. The model in this paper seeks to conceptualise both external and internal factors that could influence turnover intention in call center employees. The study seeks to examine the influence of intervening variables such as alternative job availability and organisational commitment on turnover intention. The findings suggest that organisations need to focus on how to foster organisational commitment, to enhance job satisfaction, reduce job stress and provide support to facilitate employee retention. The findings of this study would provide information that will be useful to management practitioners and academicians.

Communicating evidence-based practices to the providers and users of health services can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of these services. However, this knowledge is not consistently conveyed to either cohort. To address this issue, this paper identifies didactic methods that facilitate knowledge transfer to providers and users of health and mental health services. A review of level-one evidence suggests that promising strategies for service providers include the use of illustrative and specific information; computer-based methods; and/or information presented in clinical clusters or heuristics. Promising strategies for service users relate to style, content, format, and presentation mode. However, robust evidence is lacking. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for research, policy, and practice.

In recent years, strategic management concepts seem to be gaining greater attention from the academicians and the practitioner's alike. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) concept is one such management concepts that has spread in worldwide business and consulting communities. The BSC translates mission and vision statements into a comprehensive set of objectives and performance measures that can be quantified and appraised. Using current literature analysis, interpretation and review of corporate practices, this paper demonstrates whether the BSC can be seen as a 'necessary good' for modern organisations or is it just an addition to the existing management processes. The paper reviews whether there exists significant difference amongst the BSCs of organisations compared with others and reviews how ideally the BSCs are formulated and the shortcomings in the current BSC concepts.

The paper examines the role of leadership in facilitating collective learning and capacity building by utilising ideas from the fields of evolutionary learning, operations strategy, quality, project and risk management. Two contrasting cases are chosen to show how success and failure can depend upon collective capacity building through participative leadership and Organisational Learning (OL). The bulk of the literature surveyed concerns evolutionary OL in particular those that involve leadership which is rather a new development in this field. The paper welcomes the new trend but warns against the overenthusiastic views that ignore the reservations of the mainstream evolutionary/complexity perspective.

The innovation space has become more complex and knowledge-intensive. As a result, it is increasingly important to see innovations as knowledge that is embodied in learning and technical and organisational knowledge bases. However, in processes such as innovation development, individuals make sense of it and utilise existing knowledge differently when making decisions about which design of new technology to adopt and develop. This paper highlights the importance of a certain group's cognition in the recognition of new innovations and business opportunities, and presents a method to explore the cognition of different groups. In this study based on a 2-year research project, two different working groups assessed the future innovation and business opportunities in the field of distributed energy generation. Through analysing the results and by presenting the potential method ? the heuristic scenario method ? to explore cognition in innovation processes, this paper helps to fill the lack of methodologies in cognition research.

This paper deals with collaborative learning processes in a technology-enhanced learning environment and claims that a fully fledged technological support for management of such processes is still missing. To back up that claim the paper introduces an analysis framework for the evaluation of the state-of-the-art in technology-supported management of learning processes. This evaluation clearly reveals deficiencies in such a support and points out possible approaches for resolving the identified problems and drawbacks. As one of such approaches, this paper discusses possibilities of using the Business Process Management (BPM) technology for the management of collaborative learning processes.

Product development of Japanese companies has changed greatly from the post-war revival period, when it was promoted mainly to provide low-cost, high-quality products. In recent years, it has become necessary to develop products and services that correspond to social issues. Research and development has shifted from a technological basis to a perspective based on societal trends for developing next-generation products. According to Kubo (2011) and Asai (2013), scenario planning is an effective method for considering the future environment in R&D. Furthermore, the functions and roles of the information section, because of the contributions of information services, have changed along with the use of the R&D situation. Based on findings from questionnaires and interviews of Japanese companies, this paper presents a discussion of the importance of information collection and intelligence generation for scenario planning along with the role of an information section in the area of research and development.

Based on the literature of knowledge management (KM), this paper reports on the progress of developing a new knowledge management system (KMS) model with components architecture that are distributed over the widely-recognised socio-technical system (STS) aspects to guide developers for selecting the most applicable components to support their KM practice in learning organisations (LO). This new model will bridge the literature gap found in KMS components which are not clearly defined, nor arranged and categorised for the most efficient use inside the organisation. Without this model, KMS developers should expect deficiency in their design due to the possibility of missing or misinterpreting important components for the intended design. Therefore, with this new model, the much clearer approach is achieved by ensuring that all KMS components are clearly identified and used to guarantee KMS effectiveness in the organisation. This research leads to a further study to test and confirm the new model for KMS development in LO's.

This paper attempts to examine the influence of social capital towards learning organisation in higher education institutions. The study adopted quantitative approach with survey questionnaire. The sample of the study was 227 academic staff members of 22 higher educational institutions. Social capital was measured using structural, relational and cognitive dimensions. Learning organisation was measured using seven dimensions of Watkins and Marsick (2003). The findings of this study show strong positive relationship and impact of the social capital on learning organisation. However, the social capital dimension of cognition was found to be insignificantly related to the learning organisation. Given the importance of learning organisations in today's competitive scenario, the findings of this study are designed to enable organisational managers in formulating policies that would promote learning organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to present the study results of the human resource management role in the voluntary employee turnover models. The mixed methods design was applied. On the basis of the results of the search and evaluation of publications, the 16 models of employee turnover were selected. Applying the method of content analysis, the factors of employee turnover, described in these models, were grouped into 14 broad bands. The analysis of the selected employee turnover models showed that the human resource management in these models is presented to a great extent as a set of organisational and job characteristics. The most mentioned organisational and job characteristics in employee turnover models were job content and compensation. The impact of organisational and job characteristics on employee's decision to quit is often described as indirect or intermediate, through job attitudes.

This paper explores the impact of a learning culture on organisational change in small to medium-sized regional manufacturing enterprises following a review of the related literature, and a qualitative study of 10 manufacturing SMEs in the Riverina region of New South Wales. The research confirmed that key learning culture factors as identified in the literature were significant in the regional manufacturing firms studied. These included a strong commitment to a learning culture within the organisation, employee involvement in the development of the learning culture, demonstrating the tangible benefits of a learning culture to senior managers, and strong leadership support for organisational learning.

This paper identifies the interrelationship between the organisational learning (OL) characteristics, strategic human resource management (HRM) practices and the corresponding learning outcome for a sustained competitive advantage (SCA). Through a profound literature review, first, the knowledge assets (human capital), OL and strategic HRM are looked through the lens of SCA for developing a tighter link between OL and strategic HRM. Secondly, a conceptual framework is developed which encompasses the alignment between learning levels, such as reactors, predictors and pro-activators; learning outcomes and the learning enabled human resource (HR) practices. Thirdly, by imparting the theoretical assertions, the characteristics of learning levels are mapped appropriately to the proposed learning outcome dimensions and the corresponding learning enabled HR practices are tabulated. Fourthly, research propositions are stated in view of learning levels and learning enabled HR practices to enable the organisation learners for a significant impact on the learning outcomes. Lastly, managerial implications and the potential research questions are presented.

The financial services industry faces many demanding challenges. Firms within this industry are predominantly knowledge–based, as are most of the industry's products, processes and services. The application of knowledge management represents a clear opportunity for financial services firms to confront challenges. However, no industry specific knowledge management model for financial services exists. The contribution of this paper is to develop such a model. A multi–level model is constructed by building upon and integrating the Resource–Based/Knowledge–Based Views (RBV/KBV) of the firm, knowledge strategy, methods, knowledge domains, and communities. Based on case study research, a set of guidelines is then proposed to aid in the implementation of the model. The model and guidelines offer new opportunities to become more efficient and effective in financial firms.

To help increase the effectiveness of self–directed teams, this paper studies the attitudes and behaviour of self–directed team members during the course of a computer simulated marketing strategy game. Self–directed teams are used widely throughout organisations yet receive little scrutiny when they undertake a task which is subject to conditions of multi–period complexity and uncertainty. To explore the issues involved 42 teams of final year undergraduate marketing students completed online self–report questionnaires during the completion of a competitive marketing strategy simulation game. The research findings reveal team performance as a dynamic construct that is predicted by prior period performance and team resilience, but not emotional intelligence which is negatively related to team performance. It is hoped that future examinations of this model will highlight the need for management to be cognizant of these outcomes when designing training and intervention programmes to enable them to cope better with complex tasks and uncertainty.

This paper focuses on the processes by which firms, particularly knowledge intensive firms, can augment their overall knowledge stock by tapping into external sources of knowledge. It is argued that Top Management Teams' (TMTs') social intelligence is a critical learning capability in acquiring external knowledge that leads to strategic change. Social intelligence involves social awareness, social understanding and social skills. The study draws from the experience of 11 of the largest Information Technology Service Providers (ITSPs) in India and based on in-depth interviews. The findings show that TMTs' learning capability in the context of social intelligence to interact with external stakeholders is important to ITSPs in facilitating external knowledge acquisition and allowing new knowledge emerge within and across networks. The findings provide significant insights into ITSPs emerging in other developing countries such as in China. Research limitation and future research direction are also provided.

The aim of this paper is to explore the focus on individuals in the field of knowledge management (KM). Through a meta-review of the KM literature, we identify a relative disregard of the individual in the KM literature while information technology (IT) oriented concepts are widely represented. Our review indicates the need for a greater emphasis on individuals in KM as knowledge is based on individuals' ability and willingness to create, share and transfer knowledge. We offer suggestions on how to integrate individuals into theorising and enacting KM and also identify some avenues for future research.

Implementation of change in an organisation through culture can elicit a wide array of reactions from organisational members, spanning from acceptance to resistance. Drawing on Hatch's cultural dynamics model and on Wegner's social theory of learning, this paper dwells on an underdeveloped area in the extant literature, namely understanding change from the perspective of the change recipient, and then analysing how this is linked to the broader framework of organisational change. It is suggested that in order to drive meaningful change strategy, change agents need to learn that sensegiving imparted by them needs to be closely aligned to the sensemaking of change recipients at three levels of analysis.

How do approaches to management affect knowledge and patient care? In this paper, the establishment and dismantling of an organisational unit for research and development (R&D) in a mental health department of a Norwegian health enterprise are analysed. The characteristics of two adverse treatment ideologies and their coherence with approaches to organisation and management are outlined and discussed on the basis of the change process. During the period of the study change, management increasingly turned towards being more top-down, analytical and systemic. This caused a weakening of recognition of new, contextually and relationally informed professional approaches to knowledge and treatment. Furthermore, this entailed restrictions in relational processes involving development, research, knowledge and collaboration, something which might have skewed professional approaches in the direction of treatment and care founded on evidence-based medicine and practice.