Knowledge and Innovation in Networks: A Conceptual Framework

Under the globalized and fiercely competitive external environment, manufacturers have to enhance the organizational learning capability to cope with the challenge of Environmental Education. In addition to developing and cultivating the knowledge management capability, manufacturers have to co-develop, share, and spread relevant knowledge among different bodies in the external network. The theoretical relationship among manufacturers’ knowledge management in global manufacturing network, knowledge management in supply chain network, and organizational learning capability is proposed in this study, and the moderation effect of Environmental Education is further discussed. Based on 2013 International Manufacturing Strategy Survey VI (IMSS VI) of 463 manufacturers in 22 countries and regions. The empirical research results are concluded as below. (1) Manufacturers’ knowledge management in global manufacturing network and knowledge management in supply chain network present remarkably positive effects on the organizational learning capability. (2) Manufacturers’ knowledge management in supply chain network shows mediation effects on the relationship between knowledge management in global manufacturing network and organizational learning capability. (3) Environmental Education reveals notable moderation effects on the relationship between manufacturers’ knowledge management in supply chain network and organizational learning capability.

We review the most important WDM system innovations motivated by the evolution of DCI transport. State-of-the-art coherent transmission has already exceeded 6 b/s/Hz in transatlantic deployments. Moreover, the adoption of software innovations in automation and programmability, which DCI pioneered in transport networks, has also simplified operations and enables the emergence of open transport architectures. Combining these advances with emerging network analytic frameworks allows exciting innovations in network design and management optimization.

This article reviews current research and practice of knowledge management (KM) and inter-organizational learning in supply chain networks. Knowledge management is the organizational process for acquiring, organizing, and communicating the knowledge of individual employees so that the work of the organization becomes more effective (Alavi & Leidner, 1999). Knowledge management is an increasingly important process in business organizations because "managing human intellect—and converting it into useful products and services—is fast becoming the critical executive skill of the age" (Quinn, Anderson & Finkelstein, 1998). Grover and Davenport (2001) state that KM becomes "an integral business function" when organizations "realize that competitiveness hinges on effective management of intellectual resources." Grover and Davenport also argue that knowledge management works best when it is carried out by all the employees of the organization and not just KM specialists. Business organizations frequently partner with other firms to complement their core competencies. To collaborate effectively, partner firms have to communicate with each other information about business processes as well as share ideas of how to design or improve business processes. This phenomenon of knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries is called inter-organizational learning (Argote, 1999). Knowledge management, we posit, is necessary to facilitate inter-organizational learning and direct it in a way that supports the organization's overall objectives. Supply chain systems are an example of business networks. Supply chains involve not only multiple corporate entities but also organizational units within a single organization. We present practices used in business organizations and networks of businesses to manage the information and knowledge sharing processes using the context of supply chain systems. Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.

In the literature on e-government, the focus is predominantly on the organization of the front office and on the interaction among governmental agencies and citizens (Chadwick & May, 2003; Edmiston, 2003; Tat-Kei Ho, 2002). However, in order for e-government initiatives to be successful, back-office streamlining also has to be taken care of (Bekkers & Homburg, 2005; Homburg, 2005a). In a sense, back-office operations are the backbone of any form of e-government, and they may require information exchange and knowledge sharing among various units, departments, or organizations. The e-government phenomenon occasionally has paved the way for stirring rhetoric of technological and institutional change. For example, Wimmer, Traunmüller, and Lenk (2001) predict that “organizational boundaries will fade and give way to innovative organizational design. In this way, cooperation between administrative agencies will span wide: over distances, across organizational boundaries and even across hierarchical echelons” (p. 1). Actual e-government applications, however, show that the practice of e-government may not be as attractive as some of its benevolent proponents might claim. Back offices can be regarded as networks of organizations in which goals necessarily do not overlap and in which interests may collide. In practice, in these networks, information is the primary medium of value and exchange (Davenport, Eccles, & Prusak, 1992), and relatively uncontrolled sharing of such a powerful resource threatens information monopolies and may provide those organizations who receive information with significant power gains (Bekkers, 1998; Homburg, 1999, 2001; Homburg & Bekkers, 2002; Markus, 1983). Consequently, existing dependencies in organizational networks might be affected, and it can be expected that the exchange of information in back offices invokes a complex mixture of cooperation and conflict (Cunningham & Tynan, 1993; Homburg, 1999, 2001; Homburg & Bekkers, 2002; Knights & Murray, 1992; Kumar & van Dissel, 1996). In this article, I address the following research question: What does the nature and dynamics of interorganizational relations mean for the development and implementation of e-government information systems, and what methods and strategies are used to design and implement these systems? The focus in the analysis is on the interorganizational relations that are mobilized through the integration of various back-office systems (Bekkers & Homburg, 2005; Homburg & Bekkers, 2002). In the remainder of this article, I analyze existing e-government initiatives and, more specifically, information relations among various back offices, using a political economy view on information exchange (Homburg, 1999), and I explore methods and strategies of ICT process management in policy networks (de Bruijn, ten Heuvelhof, & In ’t Veld, 2002).

This article focuses on knowledge creation and management in regional innovation networks. A knowledge management system for a regional innovation network is designed. Besides explicit and tacit knowledge, self-transcending knowledge is taken into account within the knowledge management system. In addition, considerations of knowledge vision as well as methods from futures studies are incorporated into the system. An innovation network of the Lahti regional innovation system, Finland, is used as a case example in the article. The article highlights the importance of combining loose network development and an explicit, systematic approach to planning and working on knowledge-related matters within regional innovation networks.

Various drivers of construction innovation are distinguished and classified in four distinctive categories: environmental pressure, technological capability, knowledge exchange, and boundary spanning. Innovation drivers in these categories are active at the transfirm, intrafirm, and interfirm level in the network of organizations in the construction industry. Empirical research in the Dutch construction industry illustrates that the innovation drivers are used by managers of the authorities, clients, architects, consultants, and contractors to stimulate and facilitate innovation processes. It also exemplifies that driving innovation on the transfirm, intrafirm, and interfirm level in the network of organizations is an opportunity for managers of both public and private organizations to develop, improve, and renew their organizations' positions in the market, the quality of their organizations' projects, and the cooperative structure of the industry as a whole.

While worms and their propagation have been a major security threat over the past years, causing major financial losses and down times for many enterprises connected to the Internet, we will argue in this paper that valuable lessons can be learned from them and that network management, which is the activity supposed to prevent them, can actually benefit from their use. We focus on five lessons learned from current malware that can benefit to the network management community. For each topic, we analyse how it is been addressed in standard management frameworks, we identify their limits and describe how current malware already provides efficient solutions to these limits. We illustrate our claim through a case study on a realistic application of worm based network management, which is currently developed in our group.

Many telecommunications service provider already dispose of the structure to provide convergent services, although they did not reach an increase on sales in accord with market, investors, and customer's expectations. Most of the incumbents is running their businesses based on a few "cash cow" services. The introduction of new telecommunications services seems not to follow the same rate of technological innovations in networks' platforms and end user's devices. This article has focused its analysis in the capabilities and competencies required in a fast change business and technological environment. An alternative strategic analysis was developed using Resource Based View - RBV, Dynamic Capabilities, and Complementary Assets to analyze the innovation strategy of telecommunications service providers - TSP in Brazil since deregulation and privatization in the 90s. New technological standards and customers needs require new organizational capabilities and competencies. Under the RBV and Dynamic Capabilities conceptual framework, we examined traditional TSP's business models and organizational boundaries against the new virtual telecommunications service providers - VSP (ex. Skype, MSM, Vanco). The article concludes with a brief discussion of what directions the TSP should take in terms of organization, outsourcing, integrative and collaborative strategies to carry out the benefits of technological advancements to the consumer market.

Knowledge management (KM) plays important roles in cybersecurity. This study collects five real-life cases of good practices of KM for the domain of cybersecurity in business organizations. Through an iterative process of team-based qualitative data analysis of the five cases, the study develops a model of KM for cybersecurity that conceptualizes three common aspects of KM practices for cybersecurity in business organizations. First, KM for cybersecurity in business organizations has clear specialized organizational structures that involve three inter-organizational tiers across the organization boundaries. Second, the knowledge flows of KM for cybersecurity in business organizations emphasize on explicit, declarative, and specific knowledge. Third, in comparison with KM for other domains, KM for cybersecurity has well-defined objective measures to assess the effectiveness of KM. The domain-specific KM model based on the good practice cases provides a road-map for KM practices in the domain of cybersecurity in business organizations.

In this paper, the interpretive philosophy was adopted and drawn from structuration theory’s (ST) concept of enactment of technology-in-practice (ETiP). ETiP was used as a lens to understand and interpret factors influencing the implementation of knowledge management (KM) in an organisation where knowledge transfer/sharing is critical to its operational efficiency. Eskom, a power utility organisation in South Africa was used as the case study and the HyperWave KM system implementation was used as the object of analysis. The study’s rationale was that at all levels of operations of an organisation the need to establish systems to manage the creation, capture, flow and delivery of knowledge and information is critical. The challenge is that such systems are often seen to clash with the corporate culture and as a result have a limited impact. The study investigated the challenges of implementing KM at Eskom. Using the concept of ETiP, a conceptual framework was developed, which guided the collection and analysis of data from questionnaires and existing documents that were verified by unstructured interviews. Forty-three respondents completed the research questionnaires and 15-minute semi-structured interviews were conducted with four individual participants. Questionnaires and interview questions were based on the KM improvement model regarding (1) measures of organisational support: (a) leadership, (b) incentive, (c) coworker, (d) supervisor and (e) organisational culture; (2) knowledge content quality; (3) KMS quality; and (4) perceived usefulness of knowledge sharing.

Alliance networks are strategic decisions involving trade‐offs between two stylized structural design choices: prominent and entrepreneurial. Prominent alliance networks emphasize benefits arising out of multiple access and affiliation to other prominent firms in the network. An entrepreneurial position, on the other hand, emphasizes brokerage and diversity benefits arising out of access to nonredundant and diverse information. We demonstrate that the performance benefits of each type of alliance network are contingent on environmental change and strategy, and are thus time dependent. Following an environmental change event in the steel industry, alliance networks that were more entrepreneurial performed better, while those that were more prominent suffered performance decline. However, when the change was radical, both types of alliance networks were negatively related to performance. We suggest that following a radical change, industry alliance networks may not have the requisite information necessary for quick and effective strategic responses. Firms pursuing an analyzer strategy performed better when emphasizing a prominent, and to a lesser extent, entrepreneurial alliance network. However, firms that develop an alliance network high on both prominent and entrepreneurial structural positions had lower relative performance. Our results indicate the need for managers to assess their alliance portfolio over time and redesign it based on environmental and strategic contingencies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Managing Alliance Portfolios and Networks is a volume in the book series Research in Strategic Alliances that focuses on providing a robust and comprehensive forum for new scholarship in the field of strategic alliances. In particular, the books in the series cover new views of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and models, significant practical problems of alliance organization and management, and emerging areas of inquiry. The series also includes comprehensive empirical studies of selected segments of business, economic, industrial, government, and non-profit activities with wide prevalence of strategic alliances. Through the ongoing release of focused topical titles, this book series seeks to disseminate theoretical insights and practical management information that should enable interested professionals to gain a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of the field of strategic alliances.Managing Alliance Portfolios and Networks contains contributions by leading scholars in the field of strategic alliance research. The 9 chapters in this volume deal with significant issues relating to the management of alliance portfolios and alliance networks. These issues range from value creation in alliance ecosystems, management lessons from social enterprise, and a configurational perspective on alliance management capabilities, to the competition dynamics of alliance networks, internationalization of an alliance portfolio, and structural embeddedness of alliance networks during industry convergence. The chapters contain empirical as well as conceptual treatments of the selected topics, and collectively present a wide-ranging review of the noteworthy research perspectives on managing alliance portfolios and alliance networks.

PurposeThis paper aims to clarify how organizations manage their participation in networks to share and jointly create knowledge but also risk unwanted knowledge spillovers at the same time. As formal governance, trust and observation are less applicable in informal networks, the authors need to understand how members address the need to protect knowledge by informal practices. The study aims to investigate how the application of knowledge protection practices affects knowledge sharing in networks. The insights are relevant for organizational and network management to control knowledge risks but harvest the benefits of network engagement.Design/methodology/approachThe authors opted for an exploratory study based on 60 semi-structured interviews with members of 10 networks. In two rounds, network managers, representatives and members of the networks were interviewed. The second round of interviews was used to validate the intermediate findings. The data were complemented by documentary analysis, including network descriptions.FindingsThrough analyzing and building on the theory of psychological contracts, two informal practices of knowledge protection were found in networks of organizations: exclude crucial topics and share on selected topics and exclude details and share a selected level of detail. The authors explored how these two practices are enacted in networks of organizations with psychological contracts.Originality/valueCounter to intuition that the protection of knowledge can be strengthened only at the expense of knowledge sharing and vice versa, networks benefitted from more focused and increased knowledge sharing while reducing the risk of losing competitive knowledge by performing these knowledge protection practices.

Abstract. In today’s competition-driven world, competitive advantage is the only way for an organization to survive. There are various ways to gain a competitive edge through the application of knowledge, technology, and science. Indonesian public research and development (R&D) faces numerous challenges, one of which is researchers’ low productivity in terms of international journal publications. To boost research productivity and performance, efforts must be made to streamline knowledge flows within public R&D institutions. Additionally, data from dynamic information flows in networks can be used to evaluate bureaucratic effectiveness and identify potential knowledge talents or actors within R&D organizations. The purpose of this study is to determine the role of managers at all levels in a public R&D organization in coordinating information flow through knowledge networks and bureaucratic relationships. The social network analysis (SNA) technique was used to map managers’ role in aligning knowledge flows in an Indonesian public R&D organization. Individuals were classified according to their type and centrality in the network, and network metrics such as “degree of centrality,” “eigenvector centrality,” and “clustering coefficient” were determined. It was found that the organization has some issues with knowledge flows and power distribution. The two distinct knowledge flow patterns, one for knowledge-seeking and the other for administrative knowledge, do not appear to be synchronized. The director of the R&D center is assumed to be less influential than the top manager in terms of knowledge and bureaucratic influence. At the managerial level, clique tendency is lower, while it is higher at the nonmanagerial level. Such centralization and cliques are dangerous because managing knowledge cannot be handled by a single person in a knowledge-intensive organization such as an R&D institution. Additionally, it was discovered that middle managers are critical for knowledge-seeking purposes, whereas administrative managers dominate the bureaucratic role. The research implications are dependent on deciphering the complexities of knowledge flows among employees and the variables that influence the knowledge-transfer process within an organization. This issue will exacerbate the problem by decreasing productivity and increasing reliance on a small number of people. Additional research is required to generalize the findings to other Indonesian R&D institutions. Keywords: Bureaucracy, knowledge management, social network analysis

REVIEW QUESTION/OBJECTIVE The objective of this review is to examine conceptual and/or theoretical frameworks that are relevant to nurse practitioner education. The specific review question is: What conceptual and/or theoretical frameworks are available that are relevant to the structuring of nurse practitioner education? INCLUSION CRITERIA Types of participants This review will consider studies that include nurse practitioners in any specialty or the education of nurse practitioners in any specialty at the graduate or post-graduate level. Phenomena of interest In this review, we will consider documents that describe or evaluate frameworks, maps or conceptual structures for NP education at the graduate degree or post-graduate degree level. Literature that presents a framework for the graduate education of students in other health care disciplines at the university level will also be considered for inclusion. Frameworks for utilization in other jurisdictions (e.g. Provincial and Territorial regulatory frameworks) and metrics that assist in measuring, describing and organizing key concepts required for nurse practitioner education will be examined. Outcomes of interest for this review will include framework components in either narrative or illustrative form. Context This scoping review will consider studies that have been conducted in the provision of graduate level education of students in health care disciplines. Specific contextual focus will be directed to identify frameworks for educational programming for nurse practitioner students. Frameworks for curriculum development and/or delivery in other disciplines will also be considered.