Search results

This paper illustrates, on the basis of a case study of a multinational corporation, the positive impact of intra‐organizational networking on the capacity to sustain competitive advantage in a highly volatile environment. It aims to provide researchers, consultants and managers with insights on how to design an organization leveraging internal resources and capabilities.

One original case is presented, along with a series of analytical points drawn from this study. The research design is based on action research methods (one author participated in designing and implementing the “networking attitude” project) as well as primary (interviews) and secondary data (internal documents). The paper makes several basic points on the relationship between inter‐unit knowledge sharing and renewing competitive advantage in multinational corporations.

The critical findings relate to the importance of creating effective inter‐personal networks for enhancing knowledge sharing, and to the direct positive impact on overall strategic performance of transferring knowledge across organizational units. The bottom line is that knowledge is detained by people and it cannot be coordinated in a top‐down centralized manner, but rather requires organizational designs based on greater autonomy, efficient incentive systems and strategically coherent organizational cultures.

The findings of the paper are based on a single case study of a firm that successfully managed to create intra‐organizational knowledge‐sharing networks that resulted in significant improvements in overall performance, and hence generalization and robustness of the results would require the analysis of additional – successful and unsuccessful cases.

The paper provides insights on the creation of effective knowledge‐sharing networks in multinational corporations.

The data, approach, and analysis are all original. This paper enriches the existing theory on knowledge management and strategy formation by highlighting the direct link between leveraging internal resources and improved performance. It addresses the problem of knowledge sharing in multinational corporations and emphasizes the importance of interpersonal links and autonomy in organizations. The model of knowledge sharing described in the paper can easily be adapted in different contexts and should therefore be of value to managers. To researchers it offers a comprehensive framework integrating internal capabilities and strategy implementation perspectives.

To provide managers, researchers, and consultants with practical insights on using Communities of Practice to support innovation in organizations.

The research design is based on a four‐year longitudinal case study of five Communities of Practice (CoPs) within a Specialty Chemicals division of a multinational company Alpha. Primary (interviews, direct observation) and secondary (internal documents) data were collected and analysed resulting in several conclusions about the role of Communities of Practice in supporting organizational innovation.

The main conclusion drawn from the study is that supporting innovation involves switching between different degrees of managerial involvement in Communities of Practice, namely step‐in and step‐out modes. The step‐in mode results in knowledge expansion, which supports incremental innovation while the step‐out mode leads to knowledge probing which supports radical innovation.

The findings are based on a single case study of a firm which successfully used CoPs to support innovation across its R&D teams; generalizing these results would require the analysis of additional cases.

The paper provides managers with practical recommendations on how to align CoP dynamics with the specific innovation needs of an organization. On the one hand, CoPs require a great deal of autonomy if they are to generate radical innovation. On the other, when incremental innovation is needed managers can and should steer CoP activities.

The data, approach, and analysis are all original. This paper enriches the existing theory on the role of CoPs in supporting innovation by highlighting the need to adapt the degree of managerial involvement. The findings resolve the existing tension between two opposing streams of research – that which considers CoPs as self‐organized, emergent and fully autonomous systems and the other, which advocates that CoPs require managerial guidance.

Research on multinational corporations (MNCs) shows that they have tried various structural solutions to solve the dilemma of trying to “balance” global control and efficiency with local country-specific sensitivity, autonomy, and innovation, with the Transnational form preferred. Failings of the strategy-structure sequence lend credence to the emerging strategy-process perspective. To date, the best lesson for MNC strategy-process concerns pertaining to the global vs. country dilemma comes from March's classic paper on “balancing” exploitation vs. exploration. 21st century MNCs exist in a more rapidly changing world, however, where static “balance” solutions may be insufficient. The tradition of “circular organizing” is one alternative to the failing “balance” solution; it offers a dynamic strategy-process approach to MNC management. Another is Dupuy's concept of “tangled hierarchies” where top-down and bottom-up influence forces are interwoven such that global exploitation or country-specific exploration dominates in timely fashion. It calls for clearly defined control and autonomy regimes, with space given for emergent rules governing the rotation rate. Key questions are: What is the optimal rate at which they should rotate supremacy, and how to get this to happen and persist? Since normal quantitative methods can’t track complex, nonlinear, emergent phenomena, an in-depth longitudinal case analysis was conducted of a global MNC in the cosmetics industry, as it progressed through its early years of formation. Our case covers twelve years, during which the MNC goes through several kinds of tangled hierarchies. The dynamics in our case are rich enough to illustrate many aspects of the “tangled hierarchy” approach, while also offering new clues about oscillation rates. A number of implications for managers are discussed. Principal among these is the “edge of chaos” idea, in which managers have to avoid too-fast or too-slow oscillation rates. Very fast rates can degenerate into chaos and then collapse into the exploitation or exploration “traps.” Firms also fall into the traps simply because managers don’t understand or can’t tolerate the idea of oscillation dynamics.

Management practice is progressing at unprecedented pace and often academia is lagging behind, if not totally irrelevant, both in management research and in education. This paper strives to show how principles of pragmatism and action research are likely to increase the relevance of management research and education.

A reflection based on a broad review of ontological and epistemological issues leads to a call for philosophical re‐foundation of management academia.

Pragmatism defines truth seeking as reducing doubt, and therefore necessarily includes the notion of a client for the research effort. Action research is a practical embodiment of this approach and deserves a more prominent role.

The research limitations and implications are inherent in the chosen methodology/approach: a viewpoint that hopefully stimulates others.

This paper makes concrete suggestions as to how to bring research and education closer to the client to permit cross‐fertilization and improve problem‐solving processes.

The paper offers a meta‐synthesis of ontological and epistemological approaches to the theory‐praxis gap. It outlines the imminent pertinence of pragmatism as a philosophy and as a practice of management science and relates pragmatism to theory of action, purporting pragmatist paradigms of management knowledge socialization.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue that critically examines topics informing long‐standing disputes concering the status of theory and practice in management studies. Contributions explore the character of the imputed relationship between theory and practice.

The editorial introduction sets the discussion of topics in the context of institutional change influencing the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge products in the economy of relevance and reputation. It also presents an overview of the papers included in the special issue.

The main themes addressed in the papers represent a call for change; a call to radicalize the approaches to understanding ways of knowing; a call to re‐evaluate relations with practitioners; and a call to reimagine ways of representing knowledge to various constituencies, including fellow academic practitioners, management practitioners, students, and policy‐makers and other opinion‐formers.

The key message is one of the importance of encouraging broad discussions concerning the direction and impact of flows of knowledge and the various products in which that knowledge is embedded. It calls for a more market‐oriented approach to understanding the knowledge economy and the mediating role of various institutional players, including the academy, in the circulation, creation and destruction of knowledge products.

That a more‐market oriented approach to arrangements for the distribution of research resources in management studies calls for the development of more market‐oriented institutions capable of shaping relationships of collaboration, involvement and accountability.

Contributions expand the understanding of the problems and opportunities of imputing links to theory and practice.