Understanding innovation performance and its antecedents: A socio-cognitive model

Little attention in the previous literature has been paid to understanding employees’ factors that drive customer development knowledge and performance from the perspective of social psychology. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study validates a research model that examines the above issue. In the setting of new product development across high-tech firms in Taiwan, this study postulates that innovation self-efficacy, role conflict, and role ambiguity influence innovation performance directly and indirectly via the mediation of customer knowledge development and innovation outcome expectation. This study contributes to the social science literature by applying social cognitive theory to the rarely explored area of innovation performance and by presenting an operationalization of role stressors (i.e., role ambiguity and role conflict) in the area. Lastly, managerial implications and limitations from the empirical findings are provided.     

A Framework for Practising Knowledge Management

The management of an intangible asset such as knowledge is beset with complex and theoretical concepts. This paper sets out a matrix that describes four approaches to Knowledge Management based on whether it is in an organisational or an individual context, and whether knowledge management is imposed or empowered by managerial approaches. It explores the validity of the framework through an analysis of ongoing management projects at seven organisations.     

International Joint Ventures: Partnering Skills and Cross-Cultural Issues

Cooperative activity has become an important element of strategic behaviour and, with increasing globalisation, many alliances are being formed across national boundaries, with the attendant challenges of surmounting linguistic and other cultural barriers. This article provides new perspectives on the partnering skills needed for success in such international joint ventures (IJVs). Based on the analysis of 60 personal interviews from a sample of 20 Anglo-European JVs, four categories of skills are analysed: inter-partner skills, managing the IJV managers, the “upward management” skills of IJV managers managing the ‘parent’ partners, and those of managing the IJV itself. The article presents a matrix to examine the four categories of skill in the context in which each are used. Serving both as an analytical device and a diagnostic tool, this matrix offers results that have important implications for the management of IJVs with regard to the selection and training of managers and the inculcation of the skills required for each level of operation.