Distances, Knowledge Brokerage and Absorptive Capacity in Enhancing Regional Innovativeness: A Qualitative Case Study of Lahti Region, Finland

Parjanen, Satu; Melkas, Helinä; Uotila, Tuomo

doi:10.1080/09654313.2011.568804

Cited by 34 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Moreover, it is found that the frontline employees possessing high levels of absorptive capacity are more able to work as knowledge brokers for the customers (to obtain knowledge from the organisation and provide knowledge for the customer) and then for the organisation (to obtain knowledge from the customers and then transfer this knowledge to the organisation). These findings are also consistent with the study by Parjanen, Melkas, and Uotila (2011), which suggested high levels of absorptive capacity help knowledge brokers to bridge the knowledge gap.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

An investigation of knowledge brokering during service encounters

Hawamdeh

Hackney

2018

OJAKM

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Service encounters present excellent opportunities for obtaining and exchanging so called tacit and explicit knowledge between customers and organisations. Recently, the role of frontline employees as knowledge brokers between organisations and their customers has received attention from scholars and practitioners. Despite the significant role played by frontline employees in obtaining knowledge from customers and sharing it during service encounters, there is a lack of research that provides a comprehensive framework intended to explain their role during such engagements. Following an extensive literature review we developed a research model that identifies (1) the role of frontline employees as knowledge brokers for customers and organisations and (2) the factors that influence their roles as knowledge brokers during service encounters. In total, 30 semi-structured interviews with different informants (i.e. managers & employees) from three top commercial banks in Jordan (X, Y, & Z) were administered through three case studies. We adopted a qualitative ‘interpretative’ methodological approach to the analysis of the empirical data. Our findings from an evidence-based analysis suggest that the knowledge brokering engaged in by frontline employees during service encounters is affected by four sets of factors (organisational–level, individual-level, technology-level, & knowledge–level).

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

An investigation of knowledge brokering during service encounters

Hawamdeh

Hackney

2018

OJAKM

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“…The main reason for this is that contributors with a too large knowledge overlap might end up being too narrow minded (Beretta, 2019). More specifically, on the one hand it is likely that too much familiarity might lead to a cognitive lock-in of contributors (Parjanen et al, 2011) and thus a lower acceptance of new ideas. On the other hand, contributors with a large knowledge overlap normally have more specific and critical assessment criteria for ideas (Magnusson et al, 2016), something which would increase the risk of rejecting also potentially valuable ideas.…”

Section: Knowledge Overlapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective firm-internal online idea development

Chen

Magnusson

Björk

2019

EJIM

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Purpose New opportunities to nurture good ideas for innovation arise as firms use web-based ideation platforms for collective idea generation and development. What influences creative performance in firm-internal collective idea development is however not as well researched as idea generation and thus an important area of research is the feedback and commenting on ideas. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of feedback timeliness and knowledge overlap between feedback providers and ideas in collective firm-internal online idea development. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study has been performed, drawing on data collected from a Swedish multi-national company using a web-based system for collective firm-internal ideation. The investigation explicitly captures the effects on ideation performance played by idea development contributions, in terms of feedback timeliness and knowledge overlap between feedback providers and ideas. Findings The empirical results show that idea development is significantly influenced by feedback timeliness as well as by the knowledge overlap between feedback providers and ideas. Specifically, it is found that longer time to feedback and an increased knowledge overlap result in an increased likelihood of idea acceptance. However, beyond a certain point, the positive effects of a longer time to feedback and increased knowledge overlap decrease, resulting in curvilinear relationships with idea acceptance. Research limitations/implications The results do not only shed new light on theory about collective idea development, but also provides management implications for collective firm-internal ideation. As the data used in the study has been collected in one single firm, care should be taken in generalizing the results to other domains. Practical implications The results inform managers that it is not always better to involve more individuals in these emergent and distributed ideation systems, but that it might be beneficial to take measures to exercise some control in terms of when distributed and diverse employees can freely join in and out, especially considering the diversity of ideas, comments and creators. Originality/value The results from the empirical study reveal the effects of feedback timeliness and knowledge overlap on idea development. This provides us with new insights on the complex dynamics at place in collective firm-internal idea development and offers implications for how we can fruitfully manage this process.

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“…Spatial influences (Area 1 in Figure 1), with specifically locational influences on innovation, have been considered in the literatures on geographical proximity and knowledge transfer (Parjanen, Melkas, and Uotila 2011), regional innovation systems (Braczyk, Cooke, and Heidenreich 1998;Buesa et al 2006), structures and policy, with a particular focus on the impact of regional inequalities. Local contributors to innovation have also been considered (Shum and Watanabe 2008), along with the innovation effects of firms' location in metropolitan environments (Shefer and Frenkel 1998;Shefer, Frenkel, and Roper 2003).…”

Section: Knowledge Context -Towards An Integrated Viewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge context, learning and innovation: an integrating framework

Roper

Love

2017

Industry and Innovation

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In this conceptual paper, we develop a framework which identifies those elements of firms' knowledge context which are important for innovation, and the mechanisms through which that knowledge impacts on firms' innovation performance. We make four main contributions to the existing literature. First, our characterisation of knowledge context provides the basis for a more specific identification of which elements of firms' knowledge environment are important for innovation, discriminating between spatial, sectoral and network influences. Second, we reflect the role of innovation ambition in shaping firms' knowledge search strategies. Third, we differentiate between firms' interactive and non-interactive knowledge search activities and recognise that these may be complemented by unanticipated and serendipitous knowledge spillovers. Finally, we employ the notion of encoding capacity to reflect firms' internal ability to assimilate and apply external knowledge, and clarify its distinctiveness from the more general concept of absorptive capacity. Our framework provides an integrating mechanism for existing empirical studies, and suggests a number of new research directions related to the determinants of innovation performance and the heterogeneity of innovation outcomes.

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Distances, Knowledge Brokerage and Absorptive Capacity in Enhancing Regional Innovativeness: A Qualitative Case Study of Lahti Region, Finland

Cited by 34 publications

References 44 publications

An investigation of knowledge brokering during service encounters

An investigation of knowledge brokering during service encounters

Collective firm-internal online idea development

Knowledge context, learning and innovation: an integrating framework

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