Although there is much emphasis on the importance of continuous improvement as a dynamic capability and business process orientation, little attention has been paid to their interactions and joint effects on a firm's innovation performance. In this paper, we empirically explore the interaction effect of continuous improvement as a dynamic capability and business process orientation on time-to-market speed. By employing a unique and hand-collected dataset of Austrian manufacturing companies, it is shown that firms increase their innovation performance when they implement both—a process-oriented organizational design and continuous improvement methodologies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Purpose

Research into knowledge sharing has mainly treated knowledge from an instrumental, market-driven perspective. On this view, research has focused on the psychological (e.g. motivation), cognitive (e.g. absorptive capacity) and social features (e.g. weak/strong ties) of the knowledge entities, the structural (formal or informal) characteristics of the organizational context and the nature of knowledge to be transferred (such as its stickiness and causal complexity). The present study seeks to suggest passion as a contingency that impacts the knowledge transfer process positively. Passion for knowledge may constitute a social bond that holds a community together. Passionate members are inclined to share their object of passion—knowledge—more readily. Our argument is based on information elicited from a number of scientific experts within the petrol industry. In their daily work, experts regard the transfer of knowledge as sine qua non of becoming expert, as interactions with others are (i) learning opportunities for themselves and (ii) as social occasions to relate to their peers and on to talk about and share stories about the object to their passion (knowledge). The contribution of the paper is thus to suggest emotional aspects (passion, attachment and interest) related to knowledge as a factor that impacts the transfer of knowledge. Finally, conclusions and implications are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fitting organizational units to business processes and vice versa is critical to design optimal organizational structures and processes, which is very important for business process reengineering. Business processes and organizational structures are designed separately and independently, however, because there are very few studies to analyze the relationship between them for their effective design. This paper introduces an approach to evaluating the fit between business processes and organizational structures. An index is proposed to evaluate the process and organization fit in terms of the overhead incurred by organizational structures for transfers of work in business processes. Furthermore, indices for relatively evaluating the overall fit are proposed to compare alternative processes and structures. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate the validity and applicability of the approach. The proposed indices will allow not only the rapid evaluation of alternative organizational structures and business processes but also the identification of problems that cause the lack of fit between them. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The main objective of the study was to examine how Nigerian telecommunications organizations leverage knowledge in achieving organizational performance and competitive advantage. Forty organizations were selected by using stratified random sampling from the 150 organizations in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. Twenty-nine of the selected organizations agreed to participate in the study, and questionnaires were then distributed to 14 senior executives in each of these organizations. Four hundred and six questionnaires were returned, but only 329 complete ones were used for analysis. The results from the study showed the following: that there is poor management of human capital in the Nigerian telecommunications industry; that lack of effective communication appears to be the bane of structural capital management in the industry; that most of the telecommunications companies in Nigeria have had a long-term relationship with their customers; and that Nigerian telecommunications organizations are familiar with knowledge management as a concept. The results also showed slight differences among the six groups of organizations in their management of intellectual capital with the Local Exchange operators and National Carrier as the best and worst performers, respectively. In conclusion, it is suggested that Nigerian telecommunications organizations should strive to provide a conducive and an enabling working environment, where people can share ideas about work without being shut down by bosses and bureaucrats, and that they should try harder to implement their customers' suggestions, especially when such suggestions have to do with meeting the customers' needs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper deals with the creation of a framework for competence management research with specific emphasis on firm context. We consider that the traditional approaches to competence assignment planning lack in the development of appropriate tools for the management of the competence. Nowadays there is, indeed, a need for research into competence and the management of competence. In this paper, we develop a framework for competence management. Because no universally accepted framework exists yet, the following article proposes various aspects of competence management and illustrates a new approach to characterize and manage competency.

Employing corporate social responsibility (CSR) for competitiveness enhancement requires a radical change in managerial thinking and new tools for supporting business activities. Indeed, the lack of suitable measures for detecting the stage of a company CSR cultural development hinders the identification and exploitation of business opportunities related to CSR. Following this lead, in this paper, we propose a two-dimensional CSR model for supporting managers in their pursuing for long-term competitiveness, turning CSR-driven opportunities in business advantages.