Geoffrey G. Bell

Geography, Networks, and Knowledge Flow

Knowledge---which is closely linked to firm innovativeness---is accessed across organizational boundaries and geographic space via networks operating at different levels of analysis. However, we know tantalizingly little about the comparative influence of geography on knowledge flow across organizational boundaries over different types of ties, despite warnings that research needs to account for the geographic context of ties to fully understand causal relationships. Using a combination of primary and secondary data on 77 Canadian mutual fund companies, we find that institutional-level ties are valuable in knowledge transmission only when such ties are geographically proximate. Organization-level ties fail to act as transmitters of knowledge, regardless of geographic location. Interestingly, we find that geographically distant individual-level friendship ties are superior conduits for knowledge flow, which suggests they span “geographic holes.”

Firm orientation, community of practice, and Internet-enabled interfirm communication: Evidence from Chinese firms

What motivates firms to develop Internet-enabled interfirm communication? We draw upon the work of Alavi et al. (2005-2006) and propose that the use of the Internet in interfirm communication is influenced by a firms firm orientation and its internal communities of practice. Based on data collected from 307 international trade firms in the Beijing area, we find that Internet-enabled interfirm communication is directly driven by internal community of practices and customer orientation, and indirectly by competitor orientation and learning orientation. The internal community of practice is affected by learning orientation and competitor orientation, but not by customer orientation. The present study contributes to the literature by providing empirical investigation on firms strategic communications from the perspective of firm orientations, delineating how different firm orientations vary in impacting firms strategic communications, and exploring the bridging effect of communities of practices on the influences of firm orientations on knowledge management initiatives.

The Strategic Alliance Game: Bringing Alliances to Life

Strategic alliances—voluntary interfirm arrangements involving resource sharing—are critical to firm success. To help strategic management students better understand alliance negotiation and formation, we developed a simple game that places them in a real alliance negotiation situation, involving simultaneous cooperation and competition (i.e., co-opetition), in which they negotiate and potentially build alliances. Teams receive either production or knowledge resources and cooperate and/or compete with each other to build a product. In the process, they understand that partners have different objectives, they analyze available resources, and they evaluate whom to trust. In this article, we describe the game and provide debriefing suggestions.