Carsten Bergenholtz

Knowledge Brokering: Spanning Technological and Network Boundaries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how the spanning of inter‐organizational weak ties and technological boundaries influences knowledge brokering.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on original fieldwork and employs a case study research design, investigating a Danish HTSFs inter‐organizational activities.Findings – The findings show how an inter‐organizational search that crosses technological boundaries and is based on a network structure of weak ties can imply a reduced risk of unwanted knowledge spill‐over.Research limitations/implications – By not engaging in strong tie collaborations a knowledge brokering organization can reduce the risk of unwanted knowledge spill‐over. The risks and opportunities of knowledge spill‐over furthermore rely on the nature of the technology involved and to what extent technological boundaries are crossed.Practical implications – An organization that can span both technological boundaries and weak ties is in a unique knowledge brokering posit...

Managing Inter-Firm Collaboration In The Fuzzy Front-End: Structure As A Two-Edged Sword

Literature on innovation emphasises the potential for organisations to collaborate and network instead of carrying out innovation individually. Integrating suppliers, customers and other organisations into the innovation process is perceived as a key to success in innovation management (Chesbrough, 2003). Furthermore, the management of the initial phase of the innovation process has proven vital to the overall innovation success (Kim and Wilemon, 2002a,b). Although the merits of network-based innovations are widely acknowledged, the managerial challenges of the initial integration of external organisations in an innovation network are somewhat neglected in the literature. The aim of this paper is hence to address the challenges that an organisation faces when integrating a plurality of suppliers, customers and other organisations into the Fuzzy Front End of the innovation process.

An Examination of a Reciprocal Relationship Between Network Governance and Network Structure

In the present article, we examine the network structure and governance of inter-organisational innovation networks over time. Network governance refers to the issue of how to manage and coordinate the relational activities and processes in the network while research on network structure deals with the overall structural relations between the actors in the network. These streams of research do contain references to each other but they mainly rely on a static conception of the relationship between network structure and the applied network governance. Based on a case study of a loosely coupled Danish inter-organisational innovation network, the proposition is that a reciprocal relationship between network governance and network structure can be identified. Such a reciprocal relationship involves theoretical and practical implications for how to govern an inter-organisational network.

Self-Fulfillment of Social Science Theories: Cooling the Fire

Self-fulfillment of theories is argued to be a threat to social science in at least two ways. First, a realist might worry that self-fulfillment constitutes a threat to the idea that social science is a proper science consistent with a realist approach that develops true and successful statements about the world. Second, one might argue that the potential self-fulfilling nature of social science theories potentially undermines the ethical integrity of social scientists. We argue that if one accepts that social science theories are not based on laws akin to those that govern natural reality or acknowledges that if one can predict self-fulfillment via a meta-theory that explains the underlying regularities of the self-fulfilling change, the threat to realism is dismantled. Furthermore, on the basis of these arguments, we show that if one is unable to predict the (moral) consequences of a theory, it is difficult to ascribe moral responsibility at the individual level. It is, therefore, not the potential self-fulfillment of theories per se that poses an ethical challenge, in contrast to claims in the literature.

How institutional conditions impact university–industry search strategies and networks

A wide range of research has studied interactions between academic and industrial organisations. Less research has combined institutional theory and the terminology of social networks in order to investigate how different institutional conditions across scientific fields impact university–industry search strategies and networks in various ways. Based on a comparative analysis of the institutional conditions in two different scientific fields, we argue that the UI search processes and network formations of a high-tech small firm are shaped by these different institutional conditions within which they are embedded. The study contributes to knowledge about how the significance of weak and strong ties is relative to varying institutional conditions in general high-tech vs. life sciences and why embeddedness in pre-existing ties is not necessarily the most effective means for firms to optimise UI search and network-formation strategies.

Second‐Hand Signals: How and Why Firms Are Being Referenced in Scientific Publications

Studies of signaling theory have traditionally focused on the dyadic link between the sender and receiver of the signal. Within a science-based perspective this framing has led scholars to investigate how patents and publications of firms function as signals. I explore another important type of signal of firms, which is based on a formalized common practice of external, academic experts referring to firms in their peer reviewed publications. The findings provide qualitative evidence that helps explain why and how this new type of ‘second-hand’ signal is created, validated and systematically used by various agents in their search for and assessment of products and firms. I conclude by arguing how this second-hand nature of signals goes beyond a simple dyadic focus on senders and receivers of signals, and thus elucidates the more complex interrelations of the various types of agents involved in signaling phenomena.

A survey on information sources used by academic researchers to evaluate scientific instruments

Most scientific research is fueled by research equipment (instruments); typically hardware purchased to suit a particular research question. Examples range from 17th century microscopes to modern particle colliders and high-throughput sequencers. Here, we studied the information sources used by academic researchers to assess scientific instruments, and reveal evidence of a worrying confluence of incentives similar to those that drove the biopharmaceutical industry to adopt controversial practices such as ghostwriting and hidden sponsorship. Our findings suggest there are little understood incentives against disclosure in the peer-reviewed literature on scientific instruments; constituting an underappreciated threat to scientific standards of trustworthiness and transparency. We believe that a public debate and subsequent editorial policy action are urgently required.

Interfirm Communities: Neither Weak nor Strong Ties

Strong and trust-based ties are usually related to homogeneous and complex knowledge, while weak ties are associated with heterogeneous and simple knowledge. Interfirm communities have been shown to depend on trust-based ties, while also relying on getting access to heterogeneous knowledge. These results yield a paradox which the present paper aims to address. Based on an in-depth case study of how a high-tech small firm organizes its interfirm activity, I show how a hybrid social relation, that is neither weak nor strong, is a useful conception for interfirm communities. Hereby, the study also goes beyond a mere structural approach to the organization of social networks and hence proposes a tighter integration between research on social networks and organizational design.