Managing knowledge in organizations : a Nonaka’s SECI model operationalization

Purpose: The SECI model (Nonaka, 1994) is the best-known conceptual framework for understanding knowledge generation processes in organizations. To date, however, empirical support for this framework has been overlooked. The present study aims to provide an evidence-based groundwork for the SECI model by testing a multidimensional questionnaire Knowledge Management SECI Processes Questionnaire (KMSP-Q) designed to capture the knowledge conversion modes theorized by Nonaka. Methodology: In a twofold study, the SECI model was operationalized via the KMSP-Q. Specifically, Study One tested its eight-dimensional structure through exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses on 372 employees from different sectors. Study Two examined the construct validity and reliability by replicating the KMSP-Q factor structure in knowledge-intensive contexts (on a sample of 466 health-workers), and by investigating the unique impact of each dimension on some organizational outcomes (i.e., performance, innovativeness, collective efficacy). Findings: The overall findings highlighted that the KMSP-Q is a psychometrically robust questionnaire in terms of both dimensionality and construct validity, the different knowledge generation dimensions being specifically linked to different organizational outcomes. Research/Practical Implications: The KMSP-Q actualizes and provides empirical consistency to the theory underlying the SECI model. Moreover, it allows for the monitoring of an organization’s capability to manage new knowledge and detect the strengths/weaknesses of KM-related policies and programs. Originality/Value: This paper proposes a comprehensive measure of knowledge generation in work contexts, highlighting processes that organizations are likely to promote in order to improve their performance through the management of their knowledge resources

Global Human Resource Metrics

[Excerpt] What is the logic underlying global human resources (HR) measurement in your organization? In your organization, do you measure the contribution of global HR programs to organizational performance? Do you know what is the most competitive employee mix, e.g., proportion of expatriates vs. local employees, for your business units? (How) do you measure the cost and value of the different types of international work performed by your employees? In the globalized economy, organizations increasingly derive value from human resources, or “talent” as we shall also use the term here (Boudreau, Ramstad & Dowling, in press). The strategic importance of the workforce makes decisions about talent critical to organizational success. Informed decisions about talent require a strategic approach to measurement. However, measures alone are not sufficient, for measures without logic can create information overload, and decision quality rests in substantial part on the quality of measurements. An important element of enhanced global competitiveness is a measurement model for talent that articulates the connections between people and success, as well as the context and boundary conditions that affect those connections. This chapter will propose a framework within which existing and potential global HR measures can be organized and understood. The framework reflects the premise that measures exist to support and enhance decisions, and that strategic decisions require a logical connection between decisions about resources, such as talent, and the key organizational outcomes affected by those decisions. Such a framework may provide a useful mental model for both designers and users of HR measures

The Performance of University Spin-Offs: The Impact of Entrepreneurial Capabilities and Social Networks of Founding Teams during Start-Ups

Objectives: University spin-offs have increasingly received attention from academia, governments, and policymakers because they not only generate new innovations, productivity, and jobs the regional economies but also significantly improve university productivity and creativity (Hayter, 2013, Urbano and Guerrero, 2013). However, a lack of understanding of the contribution made by a founding team to a spin-off’s performance still remains within current studies. Employing a resource-based view theory and social networks approach, this paper addresses this gap by exploring university spin-offs in Spain. Prior work: University spin-off studies have concentrated on analysing entrepreneurial business models (Ndonzuau et al., 2002, Vohora et al., 2004b, Bower, 2003, Mets, 2010) to understand how the commercialization of research is undertaken to create a university spin-off. University spin-offs were also been analysed from the perspective of a university’s capabilities (Powers and McDougall, 2005), or capabilities and social networks of an established spin-off instead of the founding teams (Walter et al., 2006). Moreover, Vohora et al. (2004a) and Shane (2004) have suggested founders need to build capable teams, which must have entrepreneurial capabilities and qualitative social networks, to create effective university spin-offs. Both entrepreneurial capability and social network theory have been studied in prior entrepreneurship research, but have received less attention within the context of the university spin-offs (Gonzalez-Pernia et al., 2013). Approach: Utilising an internet-based survey, this paper explores entrepreneurial capabilities and social networks of founding teams in Spanish university spin-offs using quantitative data analysis. Basing upon resource-based view theory of Barney (1991) to study entrepreneurial capabilities of the founding teams, the research employ entrepreneurial technology, strategy, human capital, organizational viability, and commercial resources (see Vohora et al., 2004a). To study social networks of a founding team, we employ the conceptual model of Hoang and Antoncic (2003) that divides networks into three components: structure, governance, and content. Results and implications: The results from an examination of the sample of 181 Spanish university spin-offs empirically demonstrate that by exploiting social networks a founding team can improve its entrepreneurial capabilities, which in turn enhance its spin-off’s performance. By employing the work of Vohora et al. (2004a) and Shane (2004), this paper constructs a model in which entrepreneurial capabilities play a mediate role between social networks and spin-off’s performance. Thus, the paper has implications for universities in training and policy development to support spin-off’s activity. Value: This study addresses some fundamental questions to contribute to the theory-based understanding of university spin-offs: How do entrepreneurial capabilities of founding teams influence the performance of university spin-offs? How do social networks of founding teams contribute to the process of the university spin-offs

Using the balanced scorecard as a performance management tool in higher education

This paper presents a critical review of the relevant literature on managerialism and performance management in higher education. Afterwards, it features an inductive research that involved semi-structured interview sessions with academic members of staff. The interpretative study relied on the balanced scorecard’s (BSC) approach as it appraised the participants' opinions and perceptions on their higher education institution’s (HEI) customer, internal, organizational capacity and financial perspectives. The findings have revealed the strengths and weaknesses of using the BSC’s financial and non-financial measures to assess the institutional performance and the productivity of individual employees. In sum, this research reported that ongoing performance conversations with academic employees will help HEI leaders to identify their institutions’ value creating activities. This contribution implies that HEI leaders can utilize the BSC’s comprehensive framework as a plausible, performance management tool to regularly evaluate whether their institution is: (i) delivering inclusive, student-centered, quality education; (ii) publishing high impact research; (iii) engaging with internal and external stakeholders; and (iv) improving its financial results, among other positive outcomes.peer-reviewe

The Living and Working Together Perspective on Creativity in Organizations

Although creativity represents a cornerstone for organizations that want to keep up with competitors, customers, and the current socio-economic context, there is a dearth in the literature of systemic and comprehensive models focused on the complexity and addressing several dimensions and factors. In this context, we propose the perspective of “working and living together in organizations” to enrich the scientific dialogue with a proposition that aims to hold together different variables of interaction and relationship between different parts of the organization (Gozzoli, 2016a,b). In fact, according to our previous studies (Frascaroli et al., 2016; Gorli et al., 2016; Marta et al., 2016; Saita et al., 2016; Tamanza et al., 2016), a generative living and working together environment is itself directly linked to creativity and innovative processes. This is because in a generative living and working together environment relationality – that is, the possibility of exchange among workers mediated by the object of work – is enabled. With this study, we intend to provide a contribution to the creativity study field, applying our perspective to an extensive level of analysis. The model was tested using the Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling methodology with EQS-6.3. Our results found some interesting elements in support of the theory behind this study

Broker Positions in Task-Specific Knowledge Networks

In this paper we empirically investigate various benefits and costs associated with broker characteristics of individuals who operate in the account management system of financial service providers. We narrow our focus to broker positions in two specific task-specific knowledge networks that facilitate account management. We study the effect of broker positions on the contribution of individuals to organizational performance. We measure such a contribution by measuring the perceptions of others concerning a particular individual. We also explore how certain personal costs are associated with these task-specific broker positions. More specifically, we explore how these positions affect role ambiguity and role conflict, as self-perceived by that particular individual. To test the hypothesized effects we collect data for a network consisting of 55 individuals. We conclude with stating that service specification broker positions benefit organizations, but service delivery broker positions are detrimental to an organization and that they also invoke personal costs.social networks;account management;role stress;task-specific broker positions

Notions of Knowledge Management

{Excerpt} Knowledge management is getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time, and helping them (with incentives) to apply it in ways that strive to improve organizational performance. Data are facts, and information is interpreted data. Knowledge is created and organized by flows of information, shaped by their holder. It is tacit or explicit. Tacit knowledge is nonverbalized, intuitive, and unarticulated knowledge that people carry in their heads. It is hard to formalize and communicate because it is rooted in skills, experiences, insight, intuition, and judgment, but it can be shared in discussion, storytelling, and personal interactions. It has a technical dimension, which encompasses skills and capabilities referred to as know-how. It has a cognitive dimension, which consists of beliefs, ideals,values, schemata, or mental models. Explicit knowledge is codified knowledge that can be expressed in writing, drawings, or computer programs, for example, and transmitted in various forms. Tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge are mutually complementary forms of meaning

About the relations between Management Accounting Systems, Intellectual Capital and Performance

The present study is focused on the contribution of management accounting systems (MAS) in the development of intellectual capital (IC). Based on empirical evidence that supports the proposition that the value creation process is strongly associated to the level of IC, the study also examines the mediating effect of MAS on performance through their positive direct effect on IC. These relationships were consolidated into a model and empirically tested with data from 281 Portuguese firms using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings show that six out of nine hypothesized relationships were supported by data with positive and significant causal links between MAS and the human and structural dimensions of IC. Results confirmed the conceptual validity of the circular model for the interactions among the three IC dimensions. Results also showed a positive and significant direct effect of structural capital on performance. Overall, the results confirmed the validity of the proposed model and contributed to the literature on the role of MAS in supporting the development of the I

Perceived Organizational Support and Perceived Supervisor Support as Antecedents of Work Engagement

Research has examined how providing employees with support through the organization and its supervisors is related to beneficial workplace outcomes. However, the use of nearly identical scales in measuring perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived supervisor support (PSS) might have led to consistent correlations and redundancies between the two constructs. To explore whether these scales are problematic in measuring POS and PSS, the purpose of this study was to develop and test new measures of POS and PSS designed to capture the unique characteristics of each construct. Additionally, organizations have become particularly interested in the benefits of work engagement; more specifically, POS and PSS have been found to be predictive of work engagement. Thus, the purpose of this study was also to use the proposed scales to measure POS and PSS as antecedents of work engagement. Participants in this study included 382 employees in a Southern California healthcare company. The findings of this study suggest that the proposed measures were able to successfully capture the unique qualities of POS and PSS. Furthermore, POS and PSS were found to be predictive of work engagement, with POS being the stronger predictor. These findings also suggest that while providing employees with supervisor support increases engagement, organizational support is likely to make a larger impact. However, perceptions of organizational support are likely to include how employees perceive support from their supervisors

Building Networks of Practice

{Excerpt} Extensive media coverage of applications such as FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn suggests that networks are a new phenomenon. They are not: the first network was born the day people decided to create organizational structures to serve common interests—that is, at the dawn of mankind. However, the last 10–20 years have witnessed rapid intensification and evolution of networking activities, driven of course by information and communication technologies as well as globalization. These make it possible for individuals to exchange data, information, and knowledge; work collaboratively; and share their views much more quickly and widely than ever before. Thus, less and less of an organization’s knowledge resides within its formal boundaries or communities of practice. Knowledge cannot be separated from the networks that create, use, and transform it. In parallel, networks now play significant roles in how individuals, groups, organizations, and related systems operate. They will be even more important tomorrow. Since we can no longer assume that closely knit groups are the building blocks of human activity—or treat these as discrete units of analysis—we need to recognize and interface with less-bounded organizations, from non-local communities to links among websites. We should make certain that knowledge harvested in the external environment is integrated with what exists within, especially in dynamic fields where innovation stems from inter-organizational knowledge sharing and learning. Therefore, the structure and composition of nodes and ties, and how these affect norms and determine usefulness, must become key concerns. This makes the study of networks of practice a prime interest for both researchers and practitioners