Linda F. Edelman

Social practices and the management of knowledge in project environments

Increasingly, the importance of social aspects of knowledge retention and transfer has been emphasised in the literature on managing knowledge, with the recognition that knowledge is often tacit and situated and embedded within particular social groups and situations. This has considerable relevance for understanding attempts to manage knowledge in settings where activity and learning are project-based. Knowledge management in such a context faces many challenges, due to the one-off nature of project work and the many resulting discontinuities in methods of organisation and flows of personnel, materials and information. One important consequence is that social processes potentially play an important part in the diffusion and transfer of knowledge and learning. This paper sets out to examine the significance of social factors in enhancing knowledge management capabilities in such an environment, drawing upon case study research from the construction industry. The main finding from the research is that processes of knowledge capture, transfer and learning in project settings rely very heavily upon social patterns, practices and processes in ways which emphasise the value and importance of adopting a community-based approach to managing knowledge.

Project-Based Learning and the Role of Learning Boundaries

This paper seeks to analyse the extent to which organizations can learn from projects by focusing on the relationship between projects and their organizational context. The paper highlights three dimensions of project-based learning: the practice-based nature of learning, project autonomy and knowledge integration. This analysis generates a number of propositions on the relationship between the learning generated within projects and its transfer to other parts of the organization. In particular, the paper highlights the ‘learning boundaries’ which emerge when learning within projects creates new divisions in practice. These propositions are explored through a comparative analysis of two case studies of construction projects. This analysis suggests that the learning boundaries which develop around projects reflect the nested nature of learning, whereby different levels of learning may substitute for each other. Learning outcomes in the cases can thus be analysed in terms of the interplay between organizational learning and project-level learning. The paper concludes that learning boundaries are an important constraint on attempts to exploit the benefits of project-based learning for the wider organization.

Internationalization of Small Firms Personal Factors Revisited

Literature from export development and international entrepreneurship argues that personal factors, or the owner/founders human capital, strongly influence the choice and degree of internationalization in small firms. Personal factors include a wide array of dimensions, including achieved attributes, environmental perceptions and business skills, yet most studies bundle these dimensions with other internationalization factors. Consequently, the relative importance of human capital factors in internationalization is unclear. This article examines the differences in personal factors between internationalized and non-internationalized small firms. We compare the relative importance of four dimensions of human capital: international business skills, international orientation, perceptions of the environment, and demographic characteristics, and analyze these based on the industrial technology sector (i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary). Results show that neither traditional demographic measures nor international orientation distinguishes between internationalized and non-internationalized firms, but that environmental perceptions and selfassessed strengths in international business skills are significant. The combination of personal factors varies significantly by technology sector, with the primary and tertiary sectors showing minimal differences except in perceptions of the environment. International business skills, international orientation and perceptions of the environment differ for small firms in the secondary sector. Implications and future research directions are included.

Sharing Knowledge Across Projects Limits to ICT-led Project Review Practices

A common strategy to transfer knowledge from projects is for project teams to capture ‘lessons learned’ and store these on a database for others to access. This strategy is widely adopted but such databases are not widely used. This article explores why cross-project knowledge transfer fails, using data from 13 projects in six organizations. Following Cook and Brown, the analysis focuses on why knowledge captured from one project is typically not used as a ‘tool of knowing’ by others. The results suggest that the knowledge captured is not deemed useful and/or project teams lack awareness that there is knowledge that could be useful to help them improve their processes.

The Impact of Environment and Entrepreneurial Perceptions on Venture‐Creation Efforts: Bridging the Discovery and Creation Views of Entrepreneurship

Recent literature has highlighted two conflicting theories of entrepreneurship. In the “discovery” perspective, objective environmental conditions are considered to be the source of entrepreneurial opportunities and thus drivers of subsequent entrepreneurial action. The “creation” view, in contrast, is based on entrepreneurial perceptions and socio–cognitive enactment processes. While empirical studies have separately utilized each of these perspectives, few attempts have been made to integrate insights from both theories to empirically examine the interrelationships among environmental conditions, entrepreneurial perceptions, entrepreneurial action, and outcomes. In this article, we explicate the roles that both objective environmental conditions and entrepreneurial perceptions of opportunity and resource availability play in the process of firm creation. Utilizing longitudinal data on nascent entrepreneurs, we find that as hypothesized, entrepreneurs‘ opportunity perceptions mediate between objective characteristics of the environment and the entrepreneurs‘ efforts to start a new venture. Contrary to our expectations, we do not find a similar mediating effect for perceived resource availability. These findings have important implications for further theory development in entrepreneurship as well as for practice and education in the field.

The Processes of Project-based Learning: An Exploratory Study

This paper explores the implications of an increasing reliance on project forms for learning within organizations. In particular, we focus on the tensions between learning at project level and the stocks and flows of organizational knowledge. Based on a review of the existing literature, we outline propositions on two major processes of project-based learning (PBL): ‘learning-by-absorption’ and ‘learning-by-reflection’. Subsequently, the paper applies and refines this framework through the analysis of the findings from a qualitative study of three linked projects in the UK water industry. The findings from our study support and highlight the role of the above-noted processes in determining the extent and transfer of PBL. In particular, they indicate the role played by ‘quasi-organizational’ forms in enabling ‘learning-by-absorption’ and ‘learning-by-reflection’ at a project level. But equally, they help to explain limitations on the ability of project-based learning to bring about significant changes in knowledge stocks and flows in the wider organization.

Developing a dynamic project learning and cross-project learning capability: synthesizing two perspectives

Driven by the complexity of new products and services, project work has become increasingly common in all types of organizations. However, research on project learning suggests that often project teams do not meet their stated objectives and, moreover, there is limited organizational learning from the experiences of project work. We use the dynamic capabilities framework to argue that building a dynamic project learning capability is useful for organizations that make extensive use of projects. We use both survey and interview data to discuss the key ways in which such a dynamic capability can be built. Our survey data demonstrate the importance of documenting project learning, but our interview data show that teams are often remiss at documenting their learning. The results from the two different approaches are synthesized using Boland & Tenkasi’s notions of perspective‐making and perspective‐taking. Importantly, combining the results from the two sets of data suggests that organizations need to emphasize the benefits from project reviews and documentation and explore ways in which the documents produced can be made more useful as boundary objects to encourage the sharing of learning across projects.

One size does not fit all: Entrepreneurial expectancies and growth intentions of US women and men nascent entrepreneurs

Women are the majority owners of 30% (6.7 million) of all privately held firms in the US. The vast majority of these firms, however, are smaller than average with only 16% achieving annual revenues of more than

Separated by a Common Language? Entrepreneurship Research Across the Atlantic

500,000. This suggests that women may have different expectations for the growth of their ventures than men. Using the US Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics dataset, this paper utilizes an expectancy theory perspective to propose differences in growth expectancies of nascent men and women entrepreneurs. Specifically, we conceptualize new venture creation as a process based on the effort–performance–outcome model of entrepreneurial expectancies and propose that differences in motivations towards growth may mediate those relationships. Our findings indicate that while men want to grow their new ventures to achieve financial success, for women, financial success is just one of many reasons to achieve growth. Implications are discussed.

The Effects of Initial Location, Aspirations, and Resources on Likelihood of First Sale in Nascent Firms

While recent inventories and assessments of the entrepreneurship field examine the focus, purpose, and methods, one area receiving less attention is the outcome or dependent variable. The outcome variable is of critical importance in scholarship, as it is a leading indicator of the cumulative nature of the scholarship in our field. This paper reviews 389 articles published over the past 3 years in four top entrepreneurship journals; two published in the United States and two published in Europe. It classifies the scholarship by theoretical underpinnings, independent variables, dependent variables, and then looks at the variation in these by origin of the journal. Results indicate that entrepreneurship researchers are using a wide variety of dependent variables, that the most popular unit of analysis is the firm, and that performance, broadly defined, is the most popular dependent variable. Implications for future research are discussed.