This study examines how customer interactions affects the organizational structure of service organizations, as well as how the alignment between firm structure and customer contact influences organizational performance. Results obtained from 234 service organizations in 96 different industries support our contention that variance in demand generated by the level of customer interaction strongly influences the type of structure a service firm adopts. High degrees of customer contact were significantly related to the use of higher degrees of organizational flexibility. In addition, the results indicate that firms that align organizational flexibility with customer contact achieve superior performance.

Despite the influence and resources that large firms possess, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) can find great success of their own when they find a niche with a sustainable competitive advantage. The literature has extensively discussed how SMEs can demand a price premium in a consumer segment based on focus differentiation. This paper explores how SMEs focus-based competitive advantage relies upon on competency-based factors that support their strategy. First, they have a non-scalable core competency that global firms cannot easily recreate due to their large size. Second, the emphasis for SMEs are on people or differentiation-based process core competencies, which also tend to be the most non-scalable. Third, SMEs find growth by shifting away from a niche to a differentiation strategy (if their core competency is scalable) or leveraging their non-scalable core competency to find a "string of opportunities" that are too small for large firms to notice separately, but taken together form a decent size business.

Tacit knowledge is the key to business continuity and retaining core knowledge during organizational change. Corporations have recognized its importance and implemented knowledge management strategies to ensure valuable knowledge is preserved. While much of the academic research has looked into the nature of tacit knowledge, the role of social networks in maintaining tacit knowledge has been largely unexplored. The following paper seeks to link existing tacit knowledge theory with social network theory through theoretical analysis and literature review. First, social networks are more important when tacit knowledge cannot be codified and when the nature of that knowledge is process-based. Second, while the strength of relationships tends to increase the effectiveness of tacit knowledge transfer, weaker relationships tend to dominate the actual transfer of knowledge. Third, asymmetry in relationships tends to decrease effectiveness of tacit knowledge transfer. The purpose of the paper is to explore when social networks matter more for tacit knowledge communications and what types of social networks are most effective at transmitting tacit knowledge.

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Leaders have a significant role in teams and groups, as they affect employee performance, motivation, and productivity. Given the significant position that leaders occupy in teams and group projects, this paper argues that it is important to simultaneously examine how trust in a leader, team interactions, and team performance interact with each other. Specifically, we formulated three hypotheses: First, we predicted a positive relationship between the level of trust that team members have in their team leader and the level of team performance; second, we predicted a positive relationship between the level of trust in a leader and the level of team interactions; last, we predicted that increased trust in a leader will increase team interactions and team performance. To test the model, we utilized data from 112 MBA students engaged in a web-based simulation game wherein students develop and execute the strategies for manufacturing and distributing a product. We used structural equation modeling to test these hypotheses. Our results support the importance and value of leader trust in team interactions. The results also indicate that team interaction positively influences team performance. However, they do not support our hypothesis that trust in a leader will positively influence team performance.