Guest Editorial: Knowledge and trust in data-rich business environments

The goal of the Special Issue is to investigate how knowledge and trust can be developed, employed, diffused, and protected in business ecosystems, where data are the main asset for several actors. The issue contains six papers who have investigated these topics from different theoretical perspectives and by means of different methodological approaches. They represent an interesting combination of theoretical essays, research reviews and empirical studies. In addition, some of them focus on firms, some on consumers, and others on researchers who, like other actors today, need to find their way in the abundance of data and methodologies

Organising the process of knowledge integration: The benefits of structural ambiguity

In this article we examine how loose coupling between units and people can benefit a firm's ability to combine and recombine knowledge-based resources continuously in a creative and flexible way. An in-depth study of Oticon A/S suggests that loose coupling can be deliberately brought into the design of the organisation by introducing a certain structural ambiguity into the configuration of role systems and authority relationships. In the first part of the paper, we show how loose coupling among units and people is a distinctive feature of the way Oticon organises its administrative activities. In the second, we explore the structural properties of a loosely coupled arrangement. We develop the concepts of multipolarity, fluidity and interconnectedness and we show how these properties conduce to an increase in the effectiveness, efficiency and flexibility of the processes of knowledge integration. Structural ambiguity is thus proposed as a viable design principle for organisations operating in hypercompetitive environment, where flexible knowledge integration represents a critical condition of survival

MBA e manager: ma è veramente crisi?

In questo editoriale il vicedirettore della rivista afferma che l'attuale crisi dei master post-laurea in business & administration (MBA) non solo non è strutturale, ma anzi alla fine della congiuntura, l’MBA in quanto tale potrà uscirne sostanzialmente rafforzato

Costruirsi la Silicon Valley in casa con la corporate entrepreneurship

L'editoriale illustra come una azienda medio grande possa affrontare le attuali disruption iniettando al suo interno le logiche di imprenditorialit

Sharing economy: sfida a tutto campo

Le piattaforme digitali dischiudono scenari di creazione di vantaggio competitvo differenti. L'editorial analizza i beneifi e le opportunità

Unbundling Dynamic Capabilities: an Exploratory Study of Continuous Product Innovation

In order to better understand the organizational sources of continuous innovation, the article provides an in–depth analysis of Oticon A/S, a leading company in the hearing-aid industry which showed an impressive ability to develop new products in the Nineties. Findings highlight that dynamic capabilities are made up of: knowledge creation and absorption, knowledge integration, and knowledge reconfiguration. Discussion links the findings to previous literature and shows how these knowledge-based processes are all based on a coherent mix of organizational resources

The Effect of Technological Change on the Boundaries of Existing Firms

We provide a model of organizational change in front of a radical innovation. We build the model on existing literature on the RBV and the KBV and firm modularit

Measuring competence

Definition of measurements of competenc

Responding to Complementary-Asset Discontinuities: A Multilevel Adaptation Framework of Resources, Demand, and Ecosystems

We examine how incumbent organizations respond to complementary-asset discontinuities — technological changes that introduce new manufacturing, distribution, and sales assets but leave the incumbents’ core knowledge preserved. To examine this increasingly common but relatively overlooked phenomenon, we conducted an inductive study of how six newspapers adapted to Internet distribution from 1995 to 2019. Our contribution is a framework that highlights three levels of adaptation (resources, demand, and ecosystem) with related mechanisms and necessary outcomes. At the resource level, incumbents adopt the new complementary assets according to the perception of synergies with their existing core knowledge. At the demand level, the extent to which incumbents update their beliefs about value creation depends on how much they experiment with customers. At the ecosystem level, higher experimentation in the ecosystem helps incumbents to update their beliefs about value capture. The research offers important implications for the technological change, strategic management, and business model innovation literature. University College Dubli