Group items tagged

This study is designed to provide a detailed description of the processes involved in a knowledge transfer intervention and to develop and refine a useful model of the knowledge transfer process.

The approach is designed to articulate the broad components of the knowledge transfer process and to test these against evidence from case study sites.

While most literature promotes a positive impact of social capital on various organizational performance outcomes, empirical results on the social capital—organizational performance link are not conclusive.

This article aims to shed light on the distinguishing features of management accounting in family firms in relation to processes of professionalization and succession. The study combines insights offered by the debate on family businesses and management accounting with the empirical findings of a longitudinal case study (Monnalisa). By exploring the evolution of management accounting practices within the company and the processes of succession and professionalization, this article shows that management accounting can affect the transfer of knowledge across generations and between the owner family and the management team, thus representing and reproducing the priorities, values, and vision of the entrepreneur.

A major challenge facing the family firm is the succession process. One reason for this challenge might involve the successor's ability to acquire the predecessor's key knowledge and skills adequately to maintain and improve the organizational performance of the firm. This paper uses two theoretical approaches from the strategic management field to explore this critical process and analyze how it can be managed effectively: the resource-based theory of the firm and the emergent knowledge-based view. This conceptual framework provides a powerful tool for understanding the nature and transfer of knowledge within the family business, which becomes the basis for developing competitive advantage over nonfamily businesses.

Organizational knowledge creation is the process of making available and amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as crystallizing and connecting it to an organization's knowledge system. In other words, what individuals come to know in their (work-)life benefits their colleagues and, eventually, the larger organization.

Despite advances in family business research, the field would benefit from greater methodological rigor. However, rigor does not mean convergence of methodologies. In this article, the authors adopt a novel approach, based on narrative analysis, to address the succession process in a family business. This interpretive perspective is appropriate for family business studies, which address multifaceted and complex social constructs that are performed by different actors in multiple contexts. The analysis highlights five key themes centering on leadership style and succession, trust and communication, balance between agents, history and identity, and fear of losing one’s identity and social standing through the succession process.

Abstract

The speed of change in competitive environments has prompted firms to develop processes directed at enabling organizational adaptation. This is captured by the concept of dynamic capabilities. We focus on a particular form of business organization, that is, the family firm. Specifically, we argue that knowledge integration—a dynamic capability through which family members' specialized knowledge is recombined—guides the evolution of capabilities. We present a general framework illustrating factors that affect knowledge integration in family firms. We conclude that only those family firms that are able to effectively integrate individual family members' specialized knowledge will be successful in dynamic markets by changing their capabilities over time.

This article suggests that the egalitarian approach to organizational learning advocated by some theorists requires the development of a more inclusive learning vocabulary.

This article explores the processes through which family-controlled businesses (FCBs) access and recombine resources to match the evolving needs of their business activities. We do so by applying the conceptual lens offered by social capital to the comparative study of four FCBs active in traditional competitive arenas. Our data reveal that these firms' ability to create financial value over generations does not result from possession of some unique resource, nor from higher-level combinative capabilities; rather, these FCBs have systematically created value through their ability to renew and to reshape their social interactions within and outside the controlling family.

With regard to our measure of performance (i.e., EPRP data), there is reason to question its accuracy in terms of documentation. Anecdotally, we were told that EPRP data does not necessarily reflect the true state of affairs in reference to guideline adherence. For example, performance may actually occur even though it is not formally documented (e.g., conducting depression screening, though neglecting to record this activity). Conversely, providers admitted to documenting performance that may not have actually occurred (e.g., offering smoking cessation counseling when none was actually given). Because our outcome data may have suffered from documentation errors, the actual effect of knowledge creation on guideline compliance may not have been realized. Also, statistical power was not sufficient to detect potentially meaningful effects. Saal and Knight (1996) recommend a 10:1 case to predictor ratio for estimating statistical power for collection of predictor data. A 31-item instrument would therefore require 310 cases or respondents to yield sufficient power, clearly more than we were able to acquire. Finally, this research must be quantitatively regarded as pilot work toward the development of a survey instrument. Indeed, survey development is an iterative process in which this project was the first iteration.