Stefano Borzillo

Don't let Knowledge Walk Away: Knowledge Retention During Employee Downsizing

In today’s business environment, employee downsizing is a widespread strategy aimed at improving firm performance and competitiveness. The literature, however, highlights unequivocal findings that many downsizing initiatives fail to retain critical skills, capabilities, experience and knowledge. Employee downsizing may therefore lead to deteriorating quality, productivity and effectiveness. This article builds on this dilemma and develops a comprehensive framework to explore the relationships between employee downsizing and knowledge retention. By holding specific organizational levels responsible for knowledge retention, we derive propositions that contribute to a better understanding of how firms can retain and avoid critical knowledge losses during employee downsizing.

Top management sponsorship to guide communities of practice

Purpose – Prior research on managing communities of practice (CoP) has not investigated top managements involvement in detail. The purpose of this paper is to present three detailed and successful mechanisms through which top management contributes to the guidance of CoPs.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents an investigation of 47 CoPs conducted in several organizations. Data collection was achieved using a qualitative questionnaire, followed by in‐depth interviews with leaders of CoPs.Findings – This study explored three mechanisms used by sponsors to successfully guide CoPs. More specifically, the findings highlight a set of operational means used by top management – via sponsors – to supervise and facilitate best practice development and sharing within CoPs.Research limitations/implications – The CoPs should be examined by means of an ethnological approach, thus interacting with many members of the same CoP to gain an in‐depth understanding of each mechanisms significance for the sponsors...

Unravelling the dynamics of knowledge creation in communities of practice though complexity theory lenses

Drawing on a longitudinal case study of Alpha Chemicals, we use four complexity theory constructs – adaptive tension, enabling leadership, enhanced cooperation, and boundary spanning – to explain the continuous knowledge creation dynamics in Communities of practice (CoPs). Our findings show that the virtual cycle of knowledge creation results from CoPs oscillating between guided and self-directed modes. In a guided mode, adaptive tension and enabling leadership prevail, resulting in knowledge expansion. In a self-directed mode, enhancing cooperation and boundary spanning are the most significant, resulting in knowledge probing. This research uncovers the value of conceptualizing CoPs as complex adaptive systems with emergent and intentional processes coexisting to create a virtual knowledge creation cycle. Our findings complement the dominant theory on CoPs’ insights by moving beyond the control/autonomy debate and highlighting that knowledge creation dynamics results from a flexible combination and recombination of the different top-down and bottom-up forces.

Knowing Communities in the Front End of Innovation

OVERVIEW: Drawing on a case study at Ubisoft, a major creative firm in the videogame industry, this article shows how a firm can nurture and engage with its knowing communities to fuel the front end of innovation. Actions taken by management can catalyze four types of knowing community activities: unscripted internal activities, which are emergent, spontaneous activities internal to the firm whose content and output are not directed by management; unscripted external activities, which take place outside the firms boundaries; scripted internal activities, which are knowledge creation activities within the firm that are prescribed by management; and scripted external activities, which occur outside the firm. The findings provide insight that can help managers better understand how to foster those activities in which knowing communities can engage in order to bolster creativity and innovation.

Step‐in or step‐out: supporting innovation through communities of practice

Purpose – To provide managers, researchers, and consultants with practical insights on using Communities of Practice to support innovation in organizations.Design/methodology/approach – The research design is based on a four‐year longitudinal case study of five Communities of Practice (CoPs) within a Specialty Chemicals division of a multinational company Alpha. Primary (interviews, direct observation) and secondary (internal documents) data were collected and analysed resulting in several conclusions about the role of Communities of Practice in supporting organizational innovation.Findings – The main conclusion drawn from the study is that supporting innovation involves switching between different degrees of managerial involvement in Communities of Practice, namely step‐in and step‐out modes. The step‐in mode results in knowledge expansion, which supports incremental innovation while the step‐out mode leads to knowledge probing which supports radical innovation.Research limitations/implications – The fin...

Non-governmental organizations: strategic management for a competitive world

Purpose – This paper aims to empirically investigate competition within the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, and presents some strategic approaches to managing it. Porter’s five forces (1980) model was used as a theoretical framework to understand and quantify competition in the NGO sector, as well as to explore the differences between NGOs’ budget sizes. Traditional strategic management often fails to meet NGOs’ needs. While economization is prevalent within the NGO sector, little is known about how NGOs address competition. Design/methodology/approach – An online global survey was conducted between November 2010 and May 2011. Data were collected from 1,211 NGOs that either function as consultants or work in association with the United Nations (UN). The key informants were leaders and executive managers of NGOs. The respondents’ fields of work varied from international advocacy and development (38 per cent), education and research (14 per cent), community and neighborhood (8 per cent), health ...

A Decision-Making Framework to Analyze Important Dimensions of M&A Performance

This chapter develops a decision-making framework to analyze important dimensions of mergers and acquisitions. Using a PLS approach, we show that strategic deals’ performance – measured by means of synergy realization, relative performance (compared to the competition), and absolute performance – is determined by three dimensions: strategic logic, organizational behavior, as well as finance. We find that the following significant variables, which stem from each of these dimensions, should be taken into account to ensure a successful deal: market similarities, market complementarities, operational similarities, operational complementarities, market power, purchasing power, acquisition experience, relative size, and due diligence.

Creating technological knowledge in vintage communities of practice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how members of a “vintage community of practice” (CoP) – the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) community – recombine old technological knowledge with new technological knowledge. A vintage CoP is a group of aficionados of old technology who keep using it even after superior new technologies have emerged and technological change has taken place. This paper presents mechanisms through which developers and gamers in the MAME community and its subcommunities or hubs select and recombine old and new technology to update old arcade videogames in a format that is playable on current personal computers (PCs). Design/methodological approach – An inductive single-case exploratory case study was conducted in the MAME community. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with core community members to uncover mechanisms through which old technology-related knowledge (T-RK) was combined with new T-RK to update old versions of arcade video games into software versions...

Founder succession in new ventures: the human perspective

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to provide board members, managers, and researchers of new ventures with insights into how to manage a first-time succession process successfully. Successful succession is defined, both in terms of the quality of the experience for the stakeholders involved – in other words, how the founder-CEO, the professional incoming CEO, the top management team, and board members experience the process regarding distrust, resentment, tensions, and intention to leave – and in terms of the effectiveness of the succession, meaning organizational performance levels such as sales growth and return on assets. Depending on the initiating forces of succession (i.e. emanating from founder-CEO, the top management team (TMT), and the board/venture capitalists), evidence is offered on how best to leverage the six factors to allow for a successful succession. Design/methodology/approach – The research design is built on a case study conducted in 15 first-time successions in new ventures in the h...

Organizing for sustained innovation: the role of knowledge flows within and between organizational communities

The capacity to innovate impacts organizational performance and is crucial for competitive advantage. However, as structural inertia sets in, large organizations tend to lose their ability to sustain continuous knowledge creation dynamics. Moreover, created knowledge is not always efficiently integrated into new marketable product offerings. As a consequence, organizations continually experiment with designs allowing them to combine both imperatives. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a large firm operating in the highly competitive Specialty Chemicals industry, we explore how this organization has been able to conjugate the apparently contradictory processes of knowledge creation and integration. Our findings suggest that this capacity is enhanced by effective knowledge flows within and between the different organizational communities.