The Knowledge Absorptive Capacity to Improve the Cooperation and Innovation in the Firm

Purpose : The purpose of this paper is to study the absorptive capacity types in the knowledge management literature and aims to understand how companies can strength their contexts of cooperation in order to innovate. Design/methodology/approach: A balanced panel of 1,220 firms that respond to the Survey of Business Strategies for a three-year period was used, which represents a total of 3,660 observations. Findings: The justification of absorptive capacity typology for an innovation efficiency process. The influence of the potential and realized absorptive capacity on new products is significant and causes effects on internal research and development in diverse way. The impact of the joint ventures, suppliers’ cooperation and customers’ cooperation are significant on absorptive capacity. Research limitations/implications: It would be interesting to extend the research to another innovation metrics as new organizational methods, new processes, new designs or new methods in the use of sales channels. Practical implications: The agreement of cooperation activities constitutes an important decision for the firm’s innovation. Companies must be conscious that while suppliers and customers’ cooperation are relevant cooperation actions to increase the internal research and development, joint ventures and customers’ cooperation are significant to the growth of the new products. Social implications: The types of absorptive capacity and internal research and development serve as mediating mechanisms between cooperative activities and innovative performance. Originality/value: This paper advances the literature on absorptive capacity by showing how firms use their positions of technological vigilance and management to form their capabilities, and subsequently, to enhance innovation outcomes. This study considers it is necessary to analyze the typology of the absorptive capacity that can allow managers to understand an innovation efficiency process in the cooperation context and make better decisions. The confluence of cooperation activities, absorptive capacity and organizational objectives in internal research and development obtain higher innovative results.Peer Reviewe

Systematic Review on Inclusive Education, Sustainability in Engineering: An Analysis with Mixed Methods and Data Mining Techniques

In the last few years, research in the field of sustainability has experienced a significant increase in interest between sustainability and other areas (inclusive education, active methodologies, and society). Moreover, the use of mixed research methods (quantitative and qualitative) along with the application of data mining techniques, enables the analysis of information and the connection between the different studies. The objectives of this paper were: (1) To establish the results of the research related to the concepts of sustainability, inclusive education, and disability. (2) To study the key concepts that are detected in the articles selected with respect to the concepts of sustainability, inclusive education, disability, and their relations. In order to do so, two studies were carried out (quantitative and qualitative). In the first study, K-means and heat map clustering techniques were applied. In the second study, the technique of text mining was applied. One hundred and thirty-three scientific papers were studied, of which 54 fulfilled all the inclusion criteria. Three clusters were found in the first study; cluster 1 included the categories: inclusive society, educational innovation, and active methodologies. Cluster 2 included active methodologies and society and economy and cluster 3 included inclusive society and society and economy. In the second study, the highest Krippendorff’s Alpha coefficient were found in articles that linked sustainability with social transformation stemming from a change in education by means of the use of active teaching methods and technological resources. The research moves towards the development of competencies in sustainability at all stages of the educational system, and in all areas of knowledge.European Project “Enabling professionals and families to transfer SU Stainable knowledge and Skills to down syndrome individuals” 2018-ES01-KA201-050639 COORDINADOR 7

Comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) between standard gypsum ceiling tile and polyurethane gypsum ceiling tile

In this paper, the LCA of two gypsum ceiling tiles is compared, the first one is a traditional gypsum tile and the second is a new eco ceiling tile in which polyurethane foam waste has been incorporated. Both tiles were made at one of the largest gypsum tile factories in Europe. The life cycle assessment has been considered from cradle to grave for which the corresponding production stages have been defined. This includes the extraction and transportation of raw materials, the manufacturing process, transportation to the client, the use of the product and the end of its useful life. The results show that the tile with polyurethane has a better environmental performance than the standard commercial ceiling tile. This is quantified as a 14% reduction in energy consumption, a 14% reduction in CO2 emissions and a 25% reduction in water consumption compared with the standard tile, all the while maintaining the technical performance. An analysis of the results suggests that the new eco product has a competitive advantage on the market thanks to its environmental improvements and good technical performance.This study was carried out within the framework of the LIFEREPOLYUSE Recovery of polyurethane for reuse in eco-efficient materials. LIFE 16 ENV/ES/000254 Project. LIFE 2016. Environment Life Programme. European Commission. The authors are also grateful to the BU070P20 Project funded by the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) of the EU and the Junta de Castilla y León (Spain). In addition, the authors are grateful to the European Social Fund (European Union) and the Education Board of the Junta de Castilla y León (Spain) for funding the investigation

Gestión de Empresas 2.0. Desde la Estructura Jerárquica hasta las Redes de Conocimiento. El Modelo CIACO_RED

[ESP] En este trabajo se abordan tres de los principales fenómenos que convierten a la empresa en una estructura en constante cambio y donde las personas participativas, colaborativas, abiertas, con visión global, y sin miedo a lo nuevo e insólito, se convierten en los protagonistas principales y agentes capaces de dar respuestas a los nuevos desafíos. El resultado es una nueva organización, donde pueden participar agentes desconocidos hasta el momento, que deberá aprender a reinventarse de forma permanente y en clara sintonía con tales cambios. A este respecto, no es mucho decir, que el éxito de la empresa, su fuerza, energía y permanencia no está en sus fuentes de producción, sino en el conocimiento, talento y competencias de sus trabajadores, actuando colectivamente, adaptados a las nuevas tecnologías y sin miedo a lo nuevo e inesperado. Obviamente, ante esta coyuntura, los modelos o formas de gestión tradicionales no sirven y deben ser sustituidos por otros que presten su atención de manera prioritaria en los lazos que articulan la empresa y que, además, son los facilitadores del uso pleno de las capacidades y conocimientos de los trabajadores. Este planteamiento organizativo, en el pasado, sencillamente, no era posible. Se habla, así, de empresas 2.0, modelos de gestión abiertos, redes de conocimiento como alternativas de interacción y colaboración para acometer los nuevos desafíos y todo un conjunto de tecnologías para la información, relaciones y comunicaciones al servicio de los “trabajadores del conocimiento

Assessing Knowledge Management in the Power Sector through a Connectionist Model

It has been proven that Artificial Intelligence, in general, and Artificial Neural Networks, in particular, can be successfully applied to problems in the field of Knowledge Management (KM). One such problem is the identification and assessment of a company’s KM status. Nowadays the importance of KM to organisational survival and for the maintenance of competitive strength is widely acknowledged. Several connectionist models for the assessment and analysis of KM status are proposed and applied in this work. These models account for the specific features of a company in the Energy sector/Power sector: a dynamic, essential service and one of the basic pillars that supports the so-called “welfare state”, constituting an established strategic sector in any globalized economy

DIPKIP: A connectionist Knowledge Management System to Identify Knowledge Deficits in Practical Cases

This study presents a novel, multidisciplinary research project entitled DIPKIP (data acquisition, intelligent processing, knowledge identification and proposal), which is a Knowledge Management (KM) system that profiles the KM status of a company. Qualitative data is fed into the system that allows it not only to assess the KM situation in the company in a straightforward and intuitive manner, but also to propose corrective actions to improve that situation. DIPKIP is based on four separate steps. An initial “Data Acquisition” step, in which key data is captured, is followed by an “Intelligent Processing” step, using neural projection architectures. Subsequently, the “Knowledge Identification” step catalogues the company into three categories, which define a set of possible theoretical strategic knowledge situations: knowledge deficit, partial knowledge deficit, and no knowledge deficit. Finally, a “Proposal” step is performed, in which the “knowledge processes”—creation/acquisition, transference/distribution, and putting into practice/updating—are appraised to arrive at a coherent recommendation. The knowledge updating process (increasing the knowledge held and removing obsolete knowledge) is in itself a novel contribution. DIPKIP may be applied as a decision support system, which, under the supervision of a KM expert, can provide useful and practical proposals to senior management for the improvement of KM, leading to flexibility, cost savings, and greater competitiveness. The research also analyses the future for powerful neural projection models in the emerging field of KM by reviewing a variety of robust unsupervised projection architectures, all of which are used to visualize the intrinsic structure of high-dimensional data sets. The main projection architecture in this research, known as Cooperative Maximum-Likelihood Hebbian Learning (CMLHL), manages to capture a degree of KM topological ordering based on the application of cooperative lateral connections. The results of two real-life case studies in very different industrial sectors corroborated the relevance and viability of the DIPKIP system and the concepts upon which it is founded

A hybrid proposal for cross-sectoral analysis of knowledge management

At present time, although many theoretical formulations have been successfully proposed, there is a lack of ICT-based tools to support practical deployment of knowledge management (KM) in real settings. To bridge this gap, a hybrid artificial intelligence system is proposed in present study, aimed at gaining deeper knowledge about KM practices in four different economic sectors. By means of soft computing, companies are diagnosed according to their status regarding KM and subsequent explanations about crucial KM practices and perspectives are generated. Interesting conclusions are then derived from these explanations, allowing KM managers to optimise their decisions and obtain better results. Experimental results of real-life data from Spanish companies associated with different economic sectors validate the proposed combination of techniques

A Hybrid Solution for Advice in the Knowledge Management Field

This paper presents a hybrid artificial intelligent solution that helps to automatically generate proposals, aimed at improving the internal states of organization units from a Knowledge Management (KM) point of view. This solution is based on the combination of the Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and connectionist paradigms. The required outcome consists of customized solutions for different areas of expertise related to the organization units, once a lack of knowledge in any of those has been identified. On the other hand, the system is fed with KM data collected at the organization and unit contexts. This solution has been integrated in a KM system that additionally profiles the KM status of the whole organization

Analyzing Key Factors of Human Resources Management

This study presents the application of an unsupervised neural projection model for the analysis of Human Resources (HR) from a Knowledge Management (KM) standpoint. This work examines the critical role that the acquisition and retention of specialized employees play in Hi-tech companies, particularly following the configuration approach of Strategic HR Management. From the projections obtained through the connectionist models, experts in the field may extract conclusions related to some key factors of the HR Management. One of the main goals is to deploy improvement and efficiency actions in the implantation and execution of the HR practices in firms. The proposal is validated by means of an empirical study on a real case study related to the Spanish Hi-tech sector

Constructing a Global and Integral Model of Business Management Using a CBR System

Knowledge has become the most strategic resource in the new business environment. A case-based reasoning system, which incorporates a novel clustering and retrieval method, has been developed for identifying critical situations in business processes. The proposed method is based on a Cooperative Maximum Likelihood Hebbian Learning model, which can be used to categorize the necessities for the Acquisition, Transfer and Updating of Knowledge of the different departments of a firm. This technique is used as a tool to develop a part of a Global and Integral Model of business Management, which brings about a global improvement in the firm, adding value, flexibility and competitiveness. From this perspective, the model tries to generalise the hypothesis of organizational survival and competitiveness, so that the organisation that is able to identify, strengthen, and use key knowledge will reach a pole position