Innovation may be seen as a process of knowledge creation and the speed and direction of knowledge creation reflects the organizational set-up of the firm as well as its investments in R&D and training. Establishing ‘a learning organization’ where horizontal interaction and communication...

This paper argues that not only Edith Penrose, but also Harold Demsetz should be seen as a dominant source of inspiration for RBP scholars, that these two crucial influences hold different and even conflicting views of the economic process, and that they helped found different research areas and...

This paper questions the overall role of interfirm linkages in industrial dynamics. Studying Danish trucking and congress tourism, the paper addresses a number of particular questions concerning how industry responds to changing conditions. In trucking, the important interfirm linkages are...

Ever since its emergence in the 1970s the modern economic or Coasian theory of the firm has been discussed and challenged by sociologists, heterodox economists, management scholars, and other critics. This chapter reviews and assesses these critiques, focusing on behavioral issues (bounded...

We conjecture that the Research and Development (R&D) subsidiary of a Multinational Enterprise (MNE) can be potentially embedded in three different networks viz. the science base of the home country, the science base of the host country, and/or the internal knowledge network of sister...

The institutional approach treats organisational forms and behaviour as contingent upon institutions that are durable and socially embedded and so several authors have argued that the nature and modes of operation of multinational enterprises (MNEs) vary according to their national origins. This...

The aim of this paper is to explore the heterogeneity in R&D collaborations and of their determinants and motives. Using a recent French survey on research and innovation relations, we first show the heterogeneity of such relations thanks to a typology of their characteristics: their nature...

This paper discusses 1) the generic forces that drive the evolution of diversified industrial corporations and their implications for the corporate technology base, 2) the changing role of the central R&D lab in the context of these forces, and 3) the role of management of technology in...

It has been demonstrated that users occasionally innovate. However, it can now be observed that even end-consumers act as a source novel product designs. A case study of a firm, and “its” consumers - from the computer games industry - illustrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has...