31th EGOS Colloquium
July 2-4, 2015
Athens, Greece
Call for Papers for Sub-theme 35
Innovation, Knowledge Integration and Path Dependence –
Towards More Reflective Practices
Knowledge integration is necessary for innovating products, processes and institutions, in private as well as public sectors. Typically, it is not sufficient to get access to new or complementary knowledge, with the help of a strategic alliance, licensees or mergers. Rather it is necessary to combine and integrate stocks and flows of knowledge with the help of (inter-) organizational arrangements.
Going beyond such a governance perspective on organizations and interorganizational arrangements, the subtheme aims to explore how actual practices help or hinder the integration of diverse sets of knowledge. And going also beyond firms with strong R&D capabilities, that are typically at the centre of such inquiry, effective knowledge integration practices will be studied in not only in private but also public sectors, from sophisticated crime investigations seeking to make use of an ever increasing menu of advanced detection technologies to international relief and emergency operations.
The focus on knowledge integration practices with its emphasis on sociomaterial detail and in- and outflows complements extant research on open innovation, absorptive capacity, R&D alliances, and organizational and network learning. Although not exclusively, we wish to concentrate on the tensions and contradictions between novelty and path depend-ence; no matter whether the latter is rooted in technological, institutional or organizational arrangements or – like in regional clusters – a mixture of all three. In all these cases, path dependencies are likely to hinder the absorption and integration of new knowledge which is required for innovation; sometimes making the breaking of an established path or the even the creation of a new path necessary.
The sub-theme particularly invites contributions that focus on one or more of the following issues, more or less addressing the intersection of innovation, knowledge integration and path dependence:
• Organizing for knowledge integration practices in open innovation processes
• Knowledge absorption and integration in rapidly developing firms in emerging economies
• Combining and integrating extremely diverse knowledge for radical innovations
• Sociomaterial practices of knowledge integration for incremental innovations
• Organizational/institutional path dependence as a barrier to knowledge integration
• Path dependence of knowledge accumulation processes in and among organiza-tions
• Interplay of power and path dependence in knowledge integration processes
• Knowledge integration practices in public sector organizations
• Organizational and network learning perspectives on knowledge integration
• Capturing reflexivity in knowledge integration processes
• Indicators of knowledge integration, qualitative and quantitative methods for empirical studies beyond patent data.
Papers that discuss such issues, and possibly others, empirically or conceptually, with regard to recent or more historical developments, are cordially invited.
Sub-theme format
The sub-theme wishes to attract both high-quality contributions that are ready to be sub-mitted to a journal as well as research in progress that explores these challenging issues. All paper presentations will be commented by a discussant from the group. Session leaders will be asked to provide an open and encouraging atmosphere for discussion.
Conveners
JÖRG SYDOW is Professor of Management at the School of Business & Economics of Freie Universität Berlin and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Business of Strathclyde University, Glasgow. He is a founding co-editor of two leading German journals and member of the editorial boards of Organization Studies, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal and The Scandinavian Journal of Management. His research focuses on management and organization theory; strategic partnering and inter-firm networking, especially in service and science-based industries; technology and innovation management, especially the management of innovation networks and clusters; and industrial relations. He acts as the corresponding convener and can be reached at joerg.sydow@fu-berlin.de.
CHRISTIAN BERGREN is Professor of Industrial Management at Linköping University where he is co-directing a nine-year research program on "Knowledge Integration and Innovation in an Internationalizing Economy" (KITE). His current research focuses on processes of creative accumulation and technology competition, regulation, public policy and environmental innovation as well as studies of rapid capability building, knowledge acquisition and knowledge integration at innovating firms in emerging economies. Recently he has become involved in studies and debates regarding current forms of academic identity formation and the problems of triviality and plagiarism in management research.
ROBERT DEFILLIPPI is Professor of Strategy and International Business at Suffolk University in Boston, Mass. He held visiting scholar appointments at Imperial College of London, Cass Business School London, the Center for Research in Innovation Manage-ment at the University of Sussex, Polytechnico di Milan, and the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. His research, teaching and consulting practice focuses on creative collaborations and knowledge- and project-based perspectives on innovation. He is currently Consulting Editor for the International Journal of Management Reviews and also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Media Business Studies.
Deadline for short papers is January 12, 2015
For more information visit: http://www.egosnet.org/2015_athens/subthemes_call_for_short_papers