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This study examines how technology-intensive small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engage in open innovation. The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature on open innovation in SMEs, which has received considerably less attention than open innovation in large companies. Also, the study adds on the literature on open innovation in the commercialization phase.

A multiple case study of 13 technology-intensive SMEs in forestry sector was conducted. The forestry sector in Finland was chosen as a target context, there were many innovative pioneering SMEs operating in the industry and because the sector was going through significant changes.

Three multi-firm collaboration modes in the commercialization phase were identified: networks with a lead partner, equal partnership, and partnership for external technology commercialization. The study shows that in SMEs, open innovation is used for commercialization rather than research and development. The main conclusion of the study is that the mode of collaboration in commercialization is determined by the core competence of the firm and the strategy for open innovation.

The study results imply that SMEs benefit from opening up their innovation process in the commercialization phase. The firms in this study employed a blend of strategies that capitalized on their internal strengths. They collaborated actively with external firms and outsourced from specialists. This way they were able to compensate for their internal weaknesses and gain competitive advantage.

The study extends our understanding of open innovation by providing a detailed analysis of how open innovation takes place in the commercialization phase of innovation process. Also, the study extends understanding of the strategic use of open innovation in SMEs by showing how SMEs balance the risk of losing their competitive advantage built on innovation and the benefit of creating a broader competence base with partnerships.

Trust and control through contracting have been juxtaposed in many studies addressing interorganizational collaboration and knowledge exchange. In this study, the authors move from the opposite ends of a continuum between trust as an attitude and control exercised through formal contracts toward the center of the continuum where trust and contracting start to show similar features. The authors ask how trust in its analytical form and control gained through establishing informal protection for knowledge assets affect the innovation and market performance of firms engaged in research and development (R&D) alliances.

The authors examine the existing literature and conduct a quantitative empirical study to answer the research question.

The authors find, first, that controlling an organization’s own knowledge assets in R&D alliances with informal means of protection can be more effective than a strategy of controlling the alliance through formal contracts. Second, the authors find that an analytical audit of partner trustworthiness, and especially partner capabilities and goodwill can be more effective than trust as an attitude.

The findings support softening the sharp distinction between trust and control and provide evidence on the relevance of highlighting the firm point of view in knowledge management in R&D alliance governance.

The study adds to the existing understanding of trust and control in R&D alliance governance. Specifically, the authors turn the focus from interorganizational governance to intra-organizational knowledge management measures, and particularly toward how a focal actor can take an analytical approach to evaluate partner trustworthiness and use informal control in protecting its own knowledge assets. Consequently, this study also provides a plausible explanation for the contradictory findings in studies that examine the relationship between trust and control. The study indicates that depending on the specific nature of trust and control, they can be either a complement or a supplement factors: the extreme forms of trust and control are notably different from those forms that share similar features.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether individual-level knowledge sharing (in terms of attitudes, benefit estimations, self-efficacy and actualised behaviours) affects individual work performance.

Hypotheses are tested through structural equation modelling of survey data collected from 595 members of a public organisation.

The findings confirm the hypothesis that knowledge-sharing propensity impacts positively on knowledge-sharing behaviour. Additionally, knowledge-sharing behaviour mediates the relationship between knowledge-sharing propensity and individual performance. The latter effect is also significant amongst the most highly educated members of the organisation but not among those with the lowest educational levels.

This paper provides insights into the knowledge-sharing–attitude–behaviour–work performance linkage. It thus addresses a relatively neglected area in knowledge management (KM) research, namely, that of individual knowledge behaviours and their performance impact, with an aim to better understand the micro-foundations of KM. It also contributes to knowledge on KM in the public sector.

From the structural perspective of social‐capital theory, this research investigates how a team's social‐network relationships affect its performance. More specifically, it concerns the type of work‐group‐internal connectedness in instrumental and expressive networks that is associated with enhanced team performance, and whether knowledge mediates these effects.

The research was survey based, involving 76 work teams and a total of 499 employees in 48 organisations. The work teams carried out fairly knowledge‐intensive but only moderately complex tasks, some of which were routine in nature.

Both dense and fragmented instrumental‐network structures affect work‐team performance. However, fragmentation in expressive networks has a negative impact. Furthermore, the mediation results give empirical support to the implicit understanding that only instrumental networks transfer knowledge, especially if they are dense.

The results indicate that social‐network relationships affect team performance and also provide access to social capital (here knowledge). However, instrumental and expressive networks differ in terms of theoretical and practical implications. Future research could overcome the limitations of this study through increasing the sample size and focusing on much more fine‐grained intervening mechanisms (here knowledge sharing).

The recommendation to managers is to stimulate dense instrumental relationships in order to facilitate knowledge sharing and avoid overly fragmented expressive relationships.

First, in examining the social structure of both instrumental and expressive relationships this study responds to the growing call in organisational theory for research into the social content of social networks. Second, the contribution of this research paper lies in directly testing whether team knowledge mediates the effects of advice‐network structures on team performance.

The focus in this paper is on the extent to which bonding and bridging social relationships predict the performance effectiveness and attitudinal (identity) outcomes.

The research was survey-based, involving 76 work teams and a total of 499 employees in 48 organisations.

The analysis reveals a positive relationship between both bonding and bridging relationships and performance effectiveness and attitudinal outcomes. Team identity mediates the relationship between the team ' s social-network structure and its performance effectiveness.

The research investigates the performance effectiveness and attitudinal outcomes of social networks simultaneously, which is rare, but for study-design reasons fails to investigate behavioural outcomes. More extensive data would reveal more about the possible interaction between bridging and bonding.

In order to improve performance effectiveness managerial attention should focus on building a team and social networks.

The research shows that team identity fully mediates the influence of bonding and bridging social relationships. This finding sheds light on the processes that mediate performance effectiveness, which in turn facilitate understanding of how team dynamics lead to differing performance levels. The results also reveal how the type of social network affects the creation of a team identity: individuals identify with the team through the social networks to which they belong both within it and outside. Thus, team identity matters given the evidence suggesting that those who identify more with their work teams perform more effectively.

Businesses are increasingly using teams as their fundamental organisational unit. This paper aims to explore the impact of demographic antecedents and the social‐network structure, measured in terms of task‐related advice‐network density, centralisation and fragmentation, on work‐team performance. The paper seeks to examine: the impact of the social‐network structure (dense, fragmented or centralised) on work‐team performance and the origins of the social structure. It also tests whether team diversity (in terms of variety with regard to gender and separation with regard to age and education) has an impact on team performance.

A survey was conducted on 76 work teams (499 employees) representing 48 different organisations.

With regard to the first question, density was positively related to team performance. The impact of advice‐network fragmentation was also positive, and this is in line with the results of other studies focusing on teams conducting standard tasks. In addressing the second question the paper explored whether diversity as variety (age) and diversity as separation (age and education) had an effect on the work team's social‐network structure. Age and education had no effect, but gender diversity was related negatively to density and positively to fragmentation. It was also related negatively to team performance.

The contribution of this research is twofold in that it explores social‐structure effects on team performance and examines the possible antecedents of the team's social structure. The results of the investigation strengthen the rationale behind integrating the literature on social‐network analysis and teams.

Firms need to reach out for external knowledge in order to keep up with the pace of the markets and to renew themselves. Although research on open innovation and open knowledge search strategies is continuously accumulating, there are as yet only few studies examining the antecedents of the decision to use various external knowledge sources for R&D and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to narrow this gap by examining the effects of firms' strategic orientations on the scope of their open knowledge search.

This study builds on a cross‐industrial survey of Finnish firms in exploring the effects of three types of strategic orientations (customer relationship orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and technology orientation) on the use of open knowledge search strategies.

The results show that the customer relationship orientation is associated with the tendency of a firm to use a market‐driven knowledge search strategy. The technology orientation, on the other hand, is associated with science and generic knowledge‐driven strategies, whereas the entrepreneurial orientation is associated with the utilization of all the search strategies identified in the study.

The value of various sources of external knowledge depends on the firm's strategic goals and the nature of the industry. Practising managers utilizing the results of this study should be better able to align their organizations in the desired direction in terms of open knowledge search.

The results provide new evidence on firm‐specific heterogeneity in the use of external knowledge sources.

This paper aims to explore collective cognitive structures in business networks by analyzing the coherency of network pictures in a service development network.

The authors use the network pictures construct as a tool to analyze collective cognitive structures in a service development network. The studied case and unit of analysis is a focal network developing a consumer mobile TV service.

Based on the empirical evidence, the authors found that individuals’ cognitive structures vary extensively in the studied focal network. In addition, collective cognitive structures in intra- and inter-organizational settings differ, and thus should be distinguished.

The research findings are based on a single case study. This study is one of the first attempts to apply network pictures as a research device in industrial marketing. The concept of network conception is put forward, distinguishing intra- and inter-organizational levels of collective cognition.

The employed conceptual tool is proposed for application also when forming a business network, where it is important to make all actors’ (i.e. persons and companies) perspectives on the emerging focal business network visible.

To study the focal network-level collective cognitive structures further, the authors propose the concept of network conception to represent the phenomenon. The present study contributes to the research on collective cognitive structures in industrial marketing by extending understanding on individual- and organizational-level cognitions to a focal network-level collective cognition.