Whereas the competitive advantage of firms can arise from size and position within their industry as well as physical assets, the pattern of competition in advanced economies has increasingly come to favour those firms that can mobilise knowledge and technological skills to create novelty in...

SMEs with a weak internal R&D capacity show the tendency to shy away from using external sources of technical expertise. The tendency deters providers of industrial modernization services from supporting such structurally weak SMEs. This paper examines how Japan's local technology centres -...

Access to external sources of technical knowledge is one of the keys to staying innovative for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The literature suggests that SMEs with a weak internal R&D capacity do not make much use of institutional sources like research institutes and universities....

After the ten Regional Water Authorities (RWAs) of England and Wales were privatized in November 1989, the successor Water and Sewerage Companies (WASCs) faced a new regulatory regime that was designed to promote economic efficiency while simultaneously improving drinking water and environmental...

This article explores the notion that the workplace is a learning environment, and that the line manager is a key player determining its effectiveness. The work discusses how performance management systems may be used to clarify expectations made of line managers with regard to employee...

Customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviours (COBSBs) are critical to the success of service organisations. Transformational leadership, with its emphasis on the social elements of the leader-subordinate dyad, is a likely antecedent to COBSBs. Similarly, the interpersonal nature of services...