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Teacher knowledge, especially of proportional reasoning, is important, particularly in middle school grades in the United States. In this instrumental case study, one teacher's understanding of constant as it relates to proportions and how that understanding shifted over the course of a six hour professional development experience is discussed. The professional development focused on three important components of proportional reasoning: quantity, covariation, and constant. The teacher had access to knowledge about some, but not all, characteristics of proportional relationships. She understood that both quantities need to covary but did not constrain this relationship to multiplication. She paid persistent attention to a relationship other than the constant relationship between quantities. The knowledge that was public to the facilitator during the professional development did not reveal the persistent attention Dora paid to a relationship other than the constant relationship between quantities. The results highlight the complicated task of making sense of teachers' reasoning and suggests three key considerations for teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing globalization of business has heightened the importance of understanding national cultural influences in interorganizational relationships from both a cross-cultural and an intercultural perspective. The authors use Hofstede's (2001) multidimensional national cultural framework to theorize differences in the relationships between key firm resources. Specifically, they explore relationship resources (i.e., the influence of trust on commitment), knowledge resources (i.e., the influence of information sharing on problem resolution), and their linkage (i.e., the influence of commitment on information sharing) both cross-culturally and interculturally from the perspective of Japanese and U.S. firms. The authors use a sample of Japanese and U.S. firms that report on their primary intra- and intercultural business partners to test the hypotheses. The results indicate that national culture influences relationship resources (i.e., the relationship between trust and commitment) and the linkage of relationship resources to knowledge resources (i.e., the relationship between commitment and information sharing). The authors address implications for both academics and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose:Current understanding of how new product development (NPD) teams use knowledge management capabilities to acquire, disseminate, and apply knowledge resources to achieve competitive advantages is limited by a lack of compelling theory supported by empirical evidence. This study provides a theoretical framework and empirical validation for how an NPD team manages knowledge resources and strategic orientation to enhance its knowledge management capabilities, which, in turn, lead to business-to-busienss (B-to-B) new product advantages. Methodology/approach:A total of 100 sets of data was collected from B-to-B firms in U.S. high-tech industries. In order to validate the proposed hypotheses, we estimated the main effects using path analysis in AMOS, and tested for interaction effects using interaction term regressions. Findings:Our findings show that the two dimensions of NPD knowledge management capabilities—acquisition and application—are important but differential drivers of product quality superiority and product differentiation. In testing whether NPD management capabilities matter for two product advantage constructs, we confirmed that product quality superiority can be enhanced by both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities, whereas product differentiation can be increased strongly by NPD knowledge acquisition capabilities. Research implications:Our research confirms the importance of strategic orientation as a driver of NPD knowledge management capabilities, which enhances understanding of how strategic factors operate under a resource-based view. Our results further provide direct empirical support for the knowledge-based view of firms, in that an NPD team’s abilities to manage and deploy knowledge-based resources by acquiring and applying NPD knowledge lead to competitive advantages, for outcomes of quality superiority and differentiation. Practical implications:Our findings have relevance for managers in three ways. First, NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities have differential impacts on product quality superiority and differentiation. Second, in exploring NPD resource factors as antecedents, managers should manage levels of NPD market intelligence, resource tacitness, and NPD resource deployment differentially to directly improve NPD teams’ acquisition and application capabilities. Third, managers should not underestimate the importance of market and technological orientations in enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities. Market orientation drives both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities; technological orientation drives NPD knowledge application capabilities.Originality/value/contribution of the paper:An NPD team’s knowledge management capabilities generally, but differentially, mediate the relationships of knowledge resources and strategic orientation factors with new product competitive advantage. However, simply enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities is not a panacea for developing product competitive advantage in B-to-B settings, because of their differential effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Pressures to recycle are an increasingly prevalent influence on firms. Understanding of factors however that will lead firms to both: a. successfully capture or reuse their waste, and b. benefit from the practice, is still in a nascent form. Whether regulatory instruments such as recycling laws or increased disposal costs influence firms’ environmental performance is an area of active debate. Firm’s internal capabilities in particular, such as their experience and expertise, may limit the performance outcomes of such pressure. In this study, the impact of recycling pressures on firms’ environmental performance was assessed relative to their use of knowledge resources. Using a sample of U.S.-based manufacturers, knowledge resources were identified as a significant mediator of the influence of regulations, industry practices and disposal costs on firms’ environmental performance. Firm size, industry and ISO14001 certification were used as control variables. These findings have policy implications as well as contribute to understanding of the impact of increased institutional and economic pressures on firms to recycle their waste. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]