1,721,033 research outputs found
Enhancing knowledge sharing in age-diverse organizations: The role of HRM practices
No full textImportant demographic changes are causing organizations and teams to become increasingly age-diverse. Because knowledge sharing is critical to organizations' long-term sustainability and success, both researchers and practitioners face a strategic dilemma: namely, finding ways to cultivate greater knowledge sharing among different age cohorts. In this chapter, we claim that age diversity adds relevant opportunities and distinct challenges. On one hand, it increases demands for effective knowledge sharing: Employees of different ages are likely to hold diverse knowledge and capabilities that may be lost and/or poorly exploited if they are not effectively shared. On the other hand, age differences can activate age-related stereotypes and foster the formation of age subgroups, which can hamper social integration, communication, and ultimately, knowledge sharing. Building on these insights, this chapter looks at the role of the human resource management (HRM) system as a key facilitator of effective knowledge sharing in age-diverse organizations. To this end, the chapter focuses on HR planning, training and development, performance appraisal, and reward systems, each of which can be used to develop the motivations, norms, and accountability structures that encourage employees of different ages to bridge their differences and integrate their unique perspectives and knowledge. This chapter suggests ways of tailoring HRM practices to unlock the benefits of age diversity, which may help organizations exploit and capitalize on the knowledge-based resources held by their younger and older employees
Nascondere la conoscenza nuoce alla propria creatività (e non solo a quella degli altri)
No full textSiamo certi di fare il nostro interesse quando scegliamo intenzionalmente di non condividere ciò che sappiamo con i colleghi? Questo articolo suggerisce che nascondere la conoscenza non solo impedisce ai colleghi di generare idee creative, ma riduce anche la nostra stessa creatività.
Le organizzazioni, però, possono lavorare sul clima per diminuire la propensione individuale al knowledge hiding e attenuare i suoi effetti negativi sulla creatività
Industrial Districts, Relocation, and the Governance of the Global Value chain
No full textThe book builds on a conceptual framework that explores the reorganization
of business networks in IDs&Cs along two dimensions. The two important flows
under observation are: (1) the inflows/outflows of material resources and manufacturing
activities; and (2) the inflows/outflows of knowledge.
With reference to the first dimension, the wealth of experiences presented in
this book shows that increasing global competition has generally resulted in the
massive outflow of production activities from Western IDs&Cs through relocation.
This is clearly documented in the contributions devoted to the analysis of
three Italian industrial districts: the Montebelluna sportswear district (Chapter 5),
the Vibrata Valley clothing district (Chapter 6), and the Verona footwear district
(Chapter 4). However, as argued in the conceptual framework illustrated in Chapter
1, the effect of relocation on the industrial district’s long-term sustainability differs
depending on the possibility of using the international fragmentation of the
district value chain as a means of fostering different forms of upgrading. In order
to discriminate between the possible outcomes, Chapter 1 proposes a taxonomy of
relocation strategies. In this regard, the theoretical implication that emerges from
the reading of this book is that, whereas the analysis of global value chains has a
significant capacity for explaining the possibilities of upgrading for the enterprises
within them, its transposition to the cluster level needs to be carefully calibrated.
Any cluster may indeed comprise different global and local value chains, with
complex direct and indirect effects on the development of the cluster which cannot
be deterministically defined.
Outflows of manufacturing activities from Western IDs&Cs can potentially
favour the formation of embryonic clusters in foreign countries. In this respect,
Fiorenza Belussi (Chapter 9) and Simona Montagnana (Chapter 10) illustrate
the experience of agglomeration of footwear firms in the region of Timisoara, in
Romania.
Although the outflow of production activities characterize the evolution of most
Western industrial districts, the study conducted by Fiorenza Belussi and Silvia
Sedita in the Arzignano leather-tanning district (Chapter 7) accounts for an opposite
trend. This chapter provides an interesting example of ‘inverse relocation’,
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xvi Preface
which involves ‘transferring cheap labour’ into Western IDs&Cs as an alternative
to the relocation of manufacturing activities to low-labour-cost countries though
international subcontracting and/or FDI.
The second dimension explored in the book concerns the inflow and outflow of
knowledge. Chapter 2 by Fiorenza Belussi and Silvia Sedita provides a conceptual
elaboration on the learning processes that occurs in IDs&Cs based on the interaction
between localized and distance learning. To capture the intertwined processes
of knowledge generation and acquisition from local and external contexts the
concept of ‘learning at the boundaries’ is introduced and discussed. The importance
of this learning model is especially evident in high-tech industries, such as biotechnology,
pharmaceuticals, telecommunication and aerospace, characterized by the
complexity of the knowledge base required to foster innovation. The structure of
these industries seems to conceal globalization and spatial agglomeration through
a small worldwide pattern of connections: spatial agglomeration and interaction
in local clusters is connected globally through the participation of local firms
in distant inter-organizational networks thanks to various forms of formal and
informal R&D collaborations. This dual geography emerges as a central theme
also from the empirical studies collected in this book. In Chapter 16, concentrating
on four regions in Germany, Fornahl and Tran explore the balance between local
and external linkages and cooperative knowledge generation in the biotechnology
industry. In Chapter 17, Asheim, Coenen and Moodysson investigate different
forms of knowledge flows among actors in the Medicon Valley cluster by breaking
down a number of innovation processes into concrete activities that are analyzed
with regard to the spatial distribution of collaborators involve
Evolution and relocation in fashion- led industrial districts: evidence from two case studies
No full textThe aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about how, in advanced countries, industrial
districts specialised in traditional manufacturing industries evolve as a consequence of new
challenges linked to the globalization process. Using a multiple case study design, the study
examines the evolution of two fashion-led Italian districts: the Montebelluna sportswear system
and the Vibrata-Tordino-Vomano clothing district. Our findings reveal that cluster firms’
ability to shift from manufacturing to other activities providing higher returns along the global
value chain is key to understanding the effect of globalization and relocation processes on the
cluster’s long-term competitiveness. As illustrated in this study, weak learning districts are the
most threatened while innovative districts are able to enact a selective process of relocation,
substituting outplaced activities with more valuable ones and attracting inward investments.
Keywords: industrial districts; evolution; relocation; global value chains
L'esperienza di lavoro dei collaboratori affetti da malattia cronica: evidenze dalla ricerca e implicazioni per la pratica organizzativa
No full text
Business Networks in Clusters and Industrial Districts. The governance of the global Value chain
No full textDuring the 1980s the Marshallian concept of industrial district (ID) became widely
popular due to the resurgence of interest in the reasons that make the agglomeration
of specialized industries a territorial phenomenon worth being analyzed. The
analysis of clusters and IDs has often been limited, considering only the local
dimension of the created business networks. The external links of these systems
have been systematically under-evaluated.
This book offers a deep insight into the evolution of these systems and the
internal-external mechanism of knowledge circulation and learning. This means
that the access to external knowledge (information or R&D cooperative research)
or to productive networks (global supply chains) is studied in order to describe
how external knowledge is absorbed and how local clusters or districts become
global systems. It provides a unified approach: showing that existing capabilities
expand when locally embedded knowledge is combined with accessible external
knowledge. In this view, external knowledge linkages reduce the danger of cognitive
‘lock-in’ and ‘ over-embeddedness’, which may become important obstacles to
local learning and innovation when technological trajectories and global economic
conditions chang
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