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This theoretical paper uses a complete review of organizational control configuration (OCC) literature to illustrate the innovation, complexity and dynamics of control in knowledge‐intensive organizations (KIOs). On the basis of interdisciplinary analysis of the extant literature on OCC, the paper offers a comprehensive look at the “control pathway” taken by the various KIOs. By means of this integrative review of existing theory and research, the paper argues for greater attention to KIOs' control rationales in OCC theory and research. In doing so, it offers a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of control in KIOs and suggests a number of propositions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the information age, a common problem for employees is not lack of resources but rather how to sift through multiple resources, both electronic and interpersonal, to retrieve and locate true expert knowledge. The main objective of this study is hence to explore employees' simultaneous usage of both resources and to identify situations where employees showed a clear preference of interpersonal resources over electronic ones, and where employees found these two resources (a) (ir)replaceable and (b) complementary. Both qualitative interview data and quantitative social-network data were collected from a university-affiliated community educational office. Data analysis showed that (a) social relationships were crucial for seeking and gaining actual access to needed knowledge; (b) employees were task-driven in knowledge seeking and obtained different types of knowledge depending on availability; and (c) the choice between interpersonal and electronic resources was determined by the characteristics of the knowledge sought as well as such contextual factors as time, cost, and location. Additional interviews from other study contexts validated most of our findings, except those that require collection of complete social-network data. The article ends with a discussion on how organizations can better leverage their investment in human and technical resources to facilitate knowledge seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging knowledge economy has led to an increase of demand and locational competition for highly-skilled labour. Brain competition policy (BCP) is the reaction from national and regional policymakers. In short, BCP refers to the attraction, education and circulation of talent in and between regional and national economies. This new focus on human capital instead of physical capital indicates a paradigmatic shift in innovation policy and regional policy. While most of the contributions to this new policy approach come from the US, it can be demonstrated that different institutions in Europe prevent the simple copying of those strategies. The article contributes to the ongoing paradigmatic shift by conceptualizing a coherent framework for BCP from a European perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role played by the knowledge transfers fostering innovation in Finnish high technology industries. In particular, we examine the roles played by both face-to-face knowledge transfers and also human capital transfers between different types of agents and institutions in the promotion of innovation. In order to examine these issues we employ a unique innovation dataset which provides information about a firm's innovation performance along with information regarding the geographical and sectoral origins of a firm's recent labour acquisitions, disaggregated according to different types of agents and institutions. This allows us to develop proxies for inter-firm face-to-face knowledge exchanges and also human capital knowledge transfers. The analysis of these data allows us to identify the different roles which the geography of knowledge exchanges and labour markets between agents and institutions play in regional innovation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial scope of knowledge flows is a topic of fierce debate. While several studies have focused on single modes, the aim of this paper is to look at different knowledge flows originating from individual scientists, namely, scientific and industrial collaboration, entrepreneurial activities and human capital formation. The analysis is based on qualitative data acquired from interviews with distinguished German scientists from the disciplines of science and technology. It was found that the excellence of star scientists manifests itself in several ways. However, the results do not confirm the expectation that knowledge flows are predominantly locally embedded. The impact on the local economy was especially low for industrial collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is informed that knowledge has been at the heart of economic growth and the gradual rise in levels of social well-being since time immemorial. Economic historians point out that nowadays, disparities in the productivity and growth of different countries have far less to do with their abundance of natural resources than with the capacity to improve the quality of human capital and factors of production: in other words, to create new knowledge and ideas and incorporate them into equipment and people. It is opined that a distinction needs to be drawn between knowledge and information. Knowledge empowers its possessors with the capacity for intellectual or manual action. So it basically boils down to cognitive capacity. Information, on the other hand, takes the shape of structured and formatted data-sets that remain passive and inert until used by those with the knowledge needed to interpret and process them. The full meaning of this distinction becomes clear when one looks into the conditions governing the reproduction of knowledge and information.