1,720,981 research outputs found
Transferring knowledge by transferring individuals : innovative technology usage and organizational performance in multi-unit firms
Get PDFTransferring individuals who possess relevant knowledge from one organizational unit to another – a form of resource redeployment – may help to overcome impediments to knowledge transfer. Despite the promise of this mechanism, which often occurs through intra-firm geographic mobility, relatively little research has examined how the knowledge and expertise of individuals interacts with the organizational resources of the units to which individuals move. This study examines whether intra-firm geographic mobility improves organizational performance by providing a conduit for the transfer of knowledge, while accounting for the interaction between individual knowledge and factors at the organization-unit level of analysis. We analyze the performance effects of the transfer of engineers who have expertise in innovative process technologies. The results from a large multinational company show that the innovative process technology-related expertise of an individual engineer who moves to a new organizational unit is positively associated with the performance of that unit, suggesting that intra-firm geographic mobility improves organizational performance by providing a conduit for the transfer of knowledge. The results also show that the technology-related knowledge of engineers is a substitute for organization-level factors when a unit uses only technologies with which it is already familiar, whereas the technology-related knowledge of engineers is a complement to organization-level factors when units introduce new technologies. Thus, individuals who bring novel expertise to their organizational units through intra-firm mobility may be important vehicles for organizational learning and building new competences, helping to diffuse best practices
Searching, Shaping, and the Quest for Superior Performance
No full textThis article has three premises. First, much strategy work has tended to focus
more on search than shaping the business context. Second, prior research has yet to precisely
define and elucidate conceptually what it means to shape the business context.
We argue that shaping entails creating or changing the payoff structure—the mapping
between the choices that firms make and the payoffs to them—for all firms in a particular
business context. Third, research has paid limited attention to the interdependencies
between search and shaping, and to what we call the “paradox of shaping.” That is, firms
face the paradox that although they can improve their performance by shaping the business
context or landscape, the more often other firms reshape the landscape and the more
elements of the landscape that other firms alter, the less sustainable are any competitive
advantages derived from shaping. Taken together, these premises highlight an important
gap–that most theories and formal models of firm performance, strategic opportunities,
and competitive advantage, miss an important component of the profitability equation—
and addressing it is precisely what this article aspires to do
Resource reconfiguration: learning from performance feedback
No full textResource reconfiguration enables firms to adapt in dynamic environments by supplementing, removing, recombining, or redeploying resources. Whereas prior research has underscored the merits of resource reconfiguration and the modes for implementing it, little is known about the antecedents of this practice. According to prior research, under given industry conditions, resource reconfiguration is prompted by a firm’s corporate strategy and by characteristics of its knowledge assets. We complement this research by identifying learning from performance feedback as a fundamental driver of resource reconfiguration. We claim that performance decline relative to aspiration motivates the firm’s investment in knowledge reconfiguration, and that this investment is reinforced by the munificence of complementary resources in its industry, although uncertainty
about the availability of such resources limits that investment. Testing our conjectures with a sample of 248 electronics firms during the period 1993-2001, we reveal a clear distinction between exploitative reconfiguration, which combines existing knowledge elements, and exploratory reconfiguration, which incorporates new knowledge elements. We demonstrate that performance decline relative to aspiration motivates a shift from exploitative reconfiguration to exploratory reconfiguration. Moreover, munificence of complementary resources mitigates the tradeoff between exploratory and exploitative reconfigurations, whereas uncertainty weakens the motivation to engage in both types of reconfiguration, despite the performance gap. Nevertheless, codeployment,
which extends the deployment of knowledge assets to additional domains, is more susceptible to uncertainty than redeployment, which withdraws those assets from their original domain and reallocates them to new domains. Our study contributes to emerging research on resource reconfiguration, extends the literature on learning from performance feedback, and advances research on balancing exploration and exploitation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Investment in Offshore Oil by Diversified Petroleum Companies.
No full textThe portfolio choice model presented here incorporates the impact of internal firm covariance risk on lease prices for offshore oil tracts. Based on estimates of ex ante investment risks and returns, the model predicts tract values before and after the 1973-74 oil embargo, which are then compared with actual expenditures by the industry. The results suggest that a decrease in actual lease prices subsequent to the embargo partly may have reflected overbidding in the early 1970s, rather than underbidding later in the decade. Copyright 1989 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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