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Organizational innovations are closely associated with organizational knowledge, and thus a firm builds its knowledge base to enhance its innovative performance. However, insights into this process are still limited, especially in the context of firms in developing countries. Building on the dynamic managerial capabilities literature and open innovation paradigm, this paper attempts to fill this gap by developing and empirically testing a model that investigates how firms in developing countries accumulate knowledge to innovate.

A model of a firm's knowledge accumulation and innovation is proposed in which it specifies relationships among absorptive capacity, knowledge breadth, research and development (R&D), knowledge depth, exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, and then it is empirically tested by using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique based on the surveyed data of Vietnamese firms.

The results indicate that absorptive capacity positively influences both knowledge breadth and knowledge depth, knowledge breadth positively influences R&D, R&D positively influences exploratory innovation and knowledge depth, and knowledge depth positively influences exploratory and exploitative innovation.

The study proposes an “acquire and develop” open innovation model for firms in developing countries in which firms acquire external technologies and then develop R&D (develop and design) capability to adapt acquired technologies to their local conditions to create new organizational-specific capabilities and exploratory innovation.

This study argues that external knowledge acquisition is beneficial to innovative performance of firms in developing countries via renewing their knowledge base. Furthermore, the study provides the unique evidence that novel external knowledge acquisition and internal R&D are fit to each other in the fit-as-mediation form in which novel external knowledge acquisition is mediated by R&D to positively influence exploratory innovation.

The sustainability performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is often judged from their participation in distinct sustainability standards initiatives. But MNEs interact with a variety of sustainability standards in their value chains. This chapter proposes a partnering-intensity continuum to categorize the MNE–standards interactions to explore the benefits of a more firm-based approach for the assessment of MNEs’ contributions to sustainability.

The chapter describes standardization in coffee and biofuels industries and presents the case of a single firm to compose a continuum that reflects how MNEs move between standards attached to operations of single firms, bilateral arrangements with certification schemes, and multistakeholder partnerships. It elaborates this observed continuum by linking international business (IB) literature with the literature on global value chains (GVCs) and partnerships.

Choices about how to partner in and how to handle control over the implementation of standards shape the contributions MNEs make to sustainable development. Specifying how MNEs interact with different standards, with varying degrees of partnering and combined logics, is proposed as a better way to assess how MNEs contribute to sustainable development compared to evaluating standards per se.

This chapter draws attention to the phenomenon that international “lead firms” engage with a variety of standards. The chapter proposes that looking at partnering intensity and the subsequent level of influence over the implementation of standards enables assessing how and to what extent lead firms contribute to addressing sustainability problems.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the organizational change in 100 of the largest Spanish firms (a new national context) over the period 1993‐2003 (a more recent time period).

To achieve this purpose, consideration has been given to both traditional organizational categories and new organizational forms, such as cooperative multidivisional, competitive multidivisional, and the internal network. Detailed definitions of the new organizational forms being developed by companies are provided in the paper. Thus, these new organizational forms may differ in several aspects, such as the decision‐making process and integration between divisions.

The results show that over this period, Spanish firms experienced a steadily rising trend towards divisionalization. The cooperative multidivisional structure is the one most frequently adopted in Spain, as opposed to the competitive multidivisional form and the internal network.

The systematic study of the distinctive attributes of the new forms of organization, providing accumulated knowledge, is in an emergent phase of development in the international field, and this work seeks to contribute to such development. The nature of the study strengthens the global implications of the work, and the information obtained from top practitioners in these Spanish firms enhances the contribution of the study.

This chapter provides an overview of the state of knowledge about creative media advertising; choosing a novel medium that implicitly communicates the message. It explains what creative media advertising is and how it differs from other unconventional marketing communication formats. It addresses the theoretical mechanisms that explain how creative media affects consumers. Its final purpose is to review all the empirical findings about creative media advertising effects.

This chapter presents a systematic literature review of all the empirical research about creative media advertising that explicitly compares its effectiveness with traditional media advertising. The 11 reviewed articles with 16 experiments appeared between 2005 and 2015.

Overall creative media advertising generated positive evaluative outcomes (e.g., brand attitude) and behavior (e.g., word of mouth and sales). These effects were often mediated by a feeling of surprise and an increase in positive thoughts. It remains unclear whether creative media are perceived as persuasion attempts. Mixed findings exist for cognitive outcomes. Creative media advertising seems beneficial for creating strong brand associations, but brand memory might suffer from the technique if solving the link between the medium and the message takes away mental resources for the brand elements in the advertisement.

By reviewing all the literature about creative media advertising, the authors make recommendations for future research and for using creative media in practice. They emphasize potential boundary conditions and ideal circumstances of using creative media advertising.

This chapter defines a learning culture and discusses the relationship between knowledge and learning. The authors explain why learning is essential to bringing knowledge to life and incentivizing knowledge flows and use. The chapter addresses the interplay between knowledge and learning cultures. A key point in the chapter is the value of mistakes as learning opportunities. The authors explain how mistakes are viewed in the industrial economy and how this perspective impedes critical organizational learning. Specifically, we define mistakes, explain the double cognitive bias of mistakes, explain the tendency and impact of hiding mistakes, the side effects of double mistake bias, learn to learn from mistakes, and take on the challenge of reconciling mistake acceptance and avoidance. Finally, the chapter addresses the importance of cultivating a learning climate to realize your learning culture.

This chapter presents an exploratory study aiming at understanding how the largest multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their (inclusive) business strategies, either as suppliers, distributors, customers, innovators or as a target of their (Corporate Social Responsibility) CSR policies.

We explore the implicit or explicit strategies of 100 largest companies in the world towards SMEs as mentioned in their annual and CSR reports. This approach takes in particular stock of the ‘narratives’ developed by MNEs as an expression of their intended and (perceived) realised strategies.

The analysis of company statements show a country of origin effect in that European firms are clearly amongst the leaders in experimenting with inclusive business strategies that include SMEs. However, their number still remains limited. Sectors like banking and retail have developed the most interesting examples that are also spread over a large number of functions.

Although the results are not yet very radical, the developed taxonomy for the different types of approaches in which MNEs take a more or less active position towards SMES provides material for further studies. It can be applied in studying leading (better-practice) cases in order to help policy makers and business strategists to develop better business models for inclusive growth.

Learning through international strategic alliances is usually influenced by dispersed locations and cultural difference between the countries of the two firms. This research highlights the importance of contextual factors on learning through international strategic alliances. Based on an empirical study of 271 alliances, our findings reveal that successful alliance learning not only depends on the partner’s openness to share knowledge but also relies on the firm’s capacity to identify and absorb such knowledge. Institutional differences between the countries from where partner firms originate are considered to hinder the alliance learning by decreasing the firm’s absorptive capacity and by enhancing knowledge ambiguity. However, our research suggests that frequent direct communication and high levels of mutual trust and reciprocal commitment between partner firms positively moderate the noxious effects of institutional differences on the alliance learning process.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the current body of research on inter‐organizational knowledge transfer, indicating some of its limitations and openings for future studies. It maps research in an integrative framework of knowledge‐specific, organizational and network‐level antecedents and performance outcomes of transfer. When assuming that transfer of knowledge does not by itself influence organizational performance, this study gives special attention to a mediating role of knowledge acquisition in relationship between antecedents and performance outcomes of transfer.

In this conceptual paper the author consolidates, annotates and critiques existing research on antecedents and consequences of inter‐firm knowledge transfer. The author reveals limitations of the current body of literature and provides directions for future research.

This paper points to the underestimated role of knowledge acquisition in conceptual models of inter‐firm knowledge transfer. The author suggests that the extent, type and nature of “new knowledge learned” mediate the relationship between various antecedents of transfer and financial, product/market and strategic performance of firms. Related to this, the study calls future research to analyze knowledge transfer as a two‐stage process that involves acquisition of knowledge and its exploitation.

Although research on inter‐organizational knowledge transfer is burgeoning, yet our understanding of its antecedents and consequences remains unclear. As a first step to filling this gap, this study provides a comprehensive literature review, reveals its limitations and suggests meaningful directions for further research. It points to high explanatory value of theoretical frameworks that examine linkages between antecedents of transfer, learning outcomes and firm performance results.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the manufacturing and supply chain flexibility impact on the ability to transfer production between the units, i.e. production network coordination. To take advantage of available opportunities for different actors and locations, companies need to effectively transfer production.

The case studied was a transfer of production between The Netherlands and Sweden. The case was selected based on the opportunity it provided to perform a longitudinal study of an ongoing production transfer.

Different flexibility dimensions have different importance depending on the receiver or sender. A production transfer can be divided into four parts: knowledge, physical, administrative and supply chain transfer. The manufacturing flexibility have a high impact on the physical and knowledge transfer, the new product development dimension also have a major impact on the administrative transfer in combination with the supply chain flexibility dimension IT. The supply chain transfer was impacted by the supply chain flexibility dimensions except IT.

The paper presents a first step towards a tool for analysing the strength and weaknesses within units in relation to receiving/sending production. Furthermore, that the production transfer should be viewed as four parts with interdependencies help to identify the order of the transfer process.

This paper widens the flexibility concept to a network level. Furthermore, it describes the link between the strategic decision of coordination in the network and the operational ability of the network to accomplish this change.