Much recent work on firms' capabilities and competitive competences builds on Penrose's (1959) seminal contribution to the theory of the firm in emphasising their organisational nature, and the critical role of managerial routines in transforming resources into distinctive services (see, e.g....

Learning theory in the context of organisations has come a long way in its efforts to encapsulate the cultural, political and social dimensions of learning (Cook & Yanow, 1993; Coopey, 1995; Easterby-Smith et al., 1999, 2000). However, learning as practiced by individuals still remains relatively little...

Although the body of knowledge in relation to organisational learning is continuously growing, our understanding and interpretations of learning in business organisations continues to be confronted with several challenges. One such challenge, remains the way we seek to conceptualise learning and...

In recent years notions like the ‘learning society’, ‘knowledge economy’, ‘information society’ have populated management and organisation debates, particularly as knowledge and learning are increasingly promoted as the new sources of wealth (Ball, 1991; Drucker, 1993). Moreover, a trend...

Building on the work of Penrose (1959), Richardson (1960; 1972) and others, recent contributions to the theory of the firm have emphasised the importance of endogenously developed capabilities and competences for building sustained competitive advantages (see, for example, Foss and Knudsen, 1996)....

Recent studies of sectoral specialisation and technological development across market economies have shown how contrasting patterns of technical change can be explained by the different institutional frameworks that have become established in distinct types of economy (see, e.g., Casper, 2000;...

The bidder who wins at an auction may end up paying more for an asset than it is actually worth. This, stated very simply, is the so-called winner's curse. Consider the simplest possible case where the asset has the same actual value to all bidders, but bidders do not know for certain what that...

The aim of the present work is to study the evolution of organizational knowledge within Academic Spin-off (ASO) firms throughout their life cycle. The exploitation of tacit and indivisible new knowledge developed in the context of academic institutions entails agency problems of different...

This paper analyses the process of knowledge growth in a branch of medical science. Our study of scientific advances in glaucoma research is organized in two parts. In the first we present a qualitative overview of the problem sequences that have characterized 150 years of medical research in...

This paper is about the implications of a nation’s approach to defence procurement for its national innovation system and the innovation that occurs within it. Defence procurement involves choices over what is to be purchased (the product), from whom it should be bought (the producer), and how...