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The purpose of this paper is to identify potential constraints and determine the constraint structure in a steel manufacturing plant. “Potential constraint” is defined as a factor that is either a constraint at present or can become one in the future and “constraint structure” is used to denote the network of influences between the potential constraints in an organization.

A three-step methodology was followed. First, potential constraints in a steel manufacturing plant were identified with a literature review and expert inputs. Then, the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (fuzzy DEMATEL) technique was applied to uncover the structure and finally, an ex-post validation and refinement of the results was done with help from other experts.

A total of 10 key potential constraints to steel manufacturing were identified. The two outputs of fuzzy DEMATEL – the influence scatter plot (ISP) and the influence network diagram (IND) – together reveal the constraint structure. The 10 potential constraints could be classified into three types – influencers, mediators and influenced – respectively. Of these “Top management commitment (TMC)” and “Clear vision and long-term planning (CLP)” influence other factors the most, and are themselves influenced the least; while “Customer Relationship Management (CRM)” is most influenced by other factors, while influencing other factors the least.

Potential constraints and the constraint structure can help decision makers in a steel manufacturing plant to identify which organizational factors to address and achieving the plant's goals.

This is the first study that analyzed organizational level constraints in a steel manufacturing context.

Knowledge sharing (KS) helps employees learn from errors, but not much research has highlighted how sharing practices develop and take place in networked organizations. This study aims to explore how the professionals in a service triad develop and execute KS practices to learn from error.

A case study approach was adopted that focused on professionals working in a US-based company that was part of a health insurance service triad. The organization (“CaseCo”) processed the insurance claims filed by hospitals and doctors. The authors gathered qualitative data by conducting nine focus group discussions (FGDs) among CaseCo’s professionals. The FGDs involved a total of 51 professionals (17 women and 34 men) working in three centres of CaseCo in India.

The analyses revealed that error-related knowledge sharing (ERKS) practices emerge in a professional service triad (PST) through a culture of situated learning. They occur in ways that involves the use of repositories on the one hand, and connections between individuals on the other, both within and across the PST’s organizations. Such practices represent a dynamic system of knowledge stocks and flows in the PST.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that brings to the fore how ERKS practices develop and are executed in a professional organization in a triadic network structure.

Previous research has investigated knowledge transfer and the external consultant's role in it, during enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. In this study, the authors explore the processes through which knowledge creation happens during ERP implementation and how external consultants help operationalize the same.

The authors engaged the SECI model of the theory of organizational knowledge creation and conducted an interpretive study that interviewed 14 ERP implementation experts in India. The interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using the ATLAS.ti package.

The findings reveal fine insights into how knowledge creation takes place during ERP implementation through the four modes of knowledge conversion – socialization (S), externalization (E), combination (C) and internalization (I). The external consultants aid in operationalizing this knowledge creation process through five types of knowledge-related activities: (I) importing external knowledge, (D) discovering internal knowledge, (E) extricating confined knowledge, (A) activating flows of knowledge and (S) solving problems using knowledge. These activities can be represented by the acronym, I-D-E-A-S.

The study makes two overarching contributions: (1) offering an interpretation and description of ERP implementation as a knowledge creation process and (2) extending the understanding of the external consultants' role during ERP implementation to include new knowledge creation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop measurement scales for customer contact in a technology-generated context.

The authors adapted the scales of Froehle and Roth (2004), by following a systematic scale adaptation and development process. The adapted scales were tested for psychometric properties and refined by building measurement models using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The authors found it necessary to revise Froehle and Roth’s (2004) original items in most of the scales. After testing, the “attitude towards the episode” scale was dropped and remaining nine scales were retained.

The scales will be useful to future researchers on online shopping to advance their research. The scales can be tested and validated with data from multiple empirical contexts and adapted to those contexts as necessary. Future studies must examine path relationships between belief, attitude, and intention constructs.

The adapted scales can be useful to practitioners in the domain of online shopping to measure the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of their customers. Potential beneficiaries include service providers, service designers, industry associations as well as regulators in the government.

The overarching contribution of this paper lies in developing scales pertaining to the online shopping context of technology-generated customer contact. The paper has simultaneously addressed two relatively less attended areas of research on service operations – the role of technology in customer contact and measurement of customer contact.

The most critical phase of a change process is change implementation and it is evident that the masterfully originated change process fails due to its poor implementation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to profile how knowledge management (KM) strategies, personalization and codification, are helpful in successful change implementation by reducing employee cynicism and increasing the level of readiness for change.

Data were collected from 196 executives of National Bank of Pakistan at Time 1 (pre-implementation) and Time 2 (post-implementation) with the temporal research design. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the direct effect; Preacher and Hayes (2004) test is applied to measure the mediating effect and guidelines of Aguinis (2004) are followed for analyzing the moderating effect.

The result of the direct effect shows that both KM strategies have significant positive effect on successful change implementation. Further, mediation analysis proves that readiness for change partially mediates between KM strategies and successful change implementation. In addition, partial interactive effects of employee cynicism is observed between readiness for change and successful change implementation.

The management should initiate steps to boost personalization and codification strategies at their optimal levels. This would ultimately be helpful to implement a successful change through developing readiness for change and reducing the employee cynicism regarding change.

The area of successful change implementation in the context of KM strategies was untapped, and is examined in this study.

This paper's aim is to highlight the relationship between individual tacit knowledge and bounded awareness in managerial decision making.

The paper reviews pertinent literature on bounded awareness, individual tacit knowledge and decision making as well as that on the NASA Challenger disaster of 1986. The authors then build logical arguments towards three distinct propositions.

The distinct three propositions are: managers' dependence upon their existing tacit knowledge interacts with the bounds on their awareness in a cycle of positive reinforcement; different decision makers in the organization can experience differing bounds on their awareness towards the same piece of information; and the tension between experiences of success and failure influences the development of bounded awareness in individuals.

This study reflects on only a single case of decision‐making failure in its analyses. A variegated sample of different failures in multiple contexts might lead to finer insights.

These realizations bring to the fore a paradoxical property of dependence on tacit knowledge that it can be beneficial but can sometimes be harmful. This has implications for the field of knowledge management, wherein tacit knowledge is often a central construct.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the relationship between bounded awareness and tacit knowledge has not been explicitly discussed before. The propositions can open useful new avenues for future researchers on the antecedents of, and remedies for, bounds on managerial awareness during decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to present and describe a morphology of the research literature on knowledge transfer in organizations.

This morphology, which is a comprehensive framework characterizing the knowledge transfer literature in terms of dimensions and options, was developed by an extensive scanning of the pertinent literature.

Eight dimensions were found suitable to characterize the knowledge transfer research literature. Corresponding to each dimension, two to six options were found.

The morphology demonstrates the extensiveness and variety of knowledge transfer research. To academics, the morphology can serve as a map of the knowledge transfer territory. Using the morphology, researchers can easily assess how an existing study fits in with the entire body of knowledge transfer research. Secondly, they can discern areas that have received less attention in comparison to others and thus identify gaps they may wish to address in a new study. KM practitioners can use the morphology to assess their knowledge transfer strategies in terms of the dimensions it currently has/lacks, and take appropriate decisions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, a morphological approach has not been attempted so far to characterize KM research literature. The approach used can be applied to other areas of management as well, for similar purposes.

This paper aims to understand the knowledge strategies followed by product development (PD) units in Indian manufacturing firms.

Following literature, knowledge strategy was characterized in terms of “codification” and “personalization”. A total of 284 employees across 19 different PD units spread across India were surveyed to understand the knowledge strategies followed. Using SPSS, various statistical tests and analyses were conducted.

Personalization was consistently the preferred strategy across the PD units; however, the balance of personalization and codification was not quite in the 80‐20 ratio (one strategy practised predominantly with the other in a supporting role) as suggested by some strands of previous research, and this did not have any strikingly visible negative influences on product development performance. Further, organizations do not differ as much from each other on levels of codification, as they do on personalization.

In contexts such as product development, it may be important to pursue knowledge strategies with greater equanimity compared with other contexts that previous research has highlighted. The study bears implications not only for the formulation and implementation of knowledge strategies during product development, but also for the body of enquiry into managing knowledge in organizations.

The research contributes to a relatively less researched area in knowledge management and suggests directions for future work in the area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic relationships among the essential knowledge management (KM) constructs, i.e. strategy, enablers and processes, and to establish their links to organizational performance using a holistic integrated model.

The structural equation modeling approach was used in the research study. The primary data were collected from IT managers in Indian software firms.

The study successfully tested an integrated KM model in an Indian scenario. The study found that the KM strategy, enablers and processes had a significant positive relationship with the organizational performance. An appropriately designed KM strategy significantly influenced the KM enablers and KM process. KM enablers nurtured in an organization positively impacted the KM process. Furthermore, the KM process partially mediated the relationship between the KM strategy and organizational performance, and partially mediated the relationship between KM enablers and organizational performance.

This study is one of the few to empirically establish how the essential KM constructs of strategy, enablers and processes together impact organizational performance.

This paper aims to analyse and discuss five longitudinal case studies in which the authors have investigated how, in a specific subset of the creative industry, i.e. the arts and crafts organizations, knowledge can be systematized and transferred, becoming a real source of competitive advantage.

As no prior empirical research on the relationship among knowledge, knowledge transfer the role of craftsmen is available, an exploratory, qualitative research design seems advisable to study the phenomenon in detail. In setting up a multiple case study, the authors established a sampling frame of criteria associated with the theoretical background and research interest of this study: the case firms had to be arts and crafts organizations well-known for the high quality and value of their artifacts and have a solid reputation for preserving the tradition and the uniqueness of their manufacturing processes.

It has emerged the importance of craftsmen within arts and crafts organizations, whose know-how and technical skills are high valued by colleagues, by the market (customers), within the society and the territory where they operate. The knowledge acquired and retained by the craftsmen becomes therefore crucial for the survival of the arts and crafts organizations and for their profitability in the long term.

From the empirical investigation, it has emerged a certain unawareness at managerial level of the strategic relevance of the craftsmen knowhow and skills and of how to practically and effectively transfer their knowledge to a future generation of young craftsmen to continue to satisfy a unique and exclusive market demand. Furthermore, it has emerged the lack of a common knowledge transfer policy to different organizations. Therefore, it has not been possible to define a standard framework for the knowledge transfer process because it is influenced by the organizational structure, the management style of the organization owner (very often a family that retains the totality of the organization shares/quota), the social context and the territory where the organization is located, as well as the target market and the specific niche of customers who buy the organization’s products. This result represents a potential threat for the survival of arts and crafts organizations in the long run.

A common result that has emerged is that craftsmen play a crucial role for the success of arts and crafts organizations, through the creation and production of exclusive, high value products; hence, it is crucial to preserve and transfer properly their knowhow and skills. This result is particularly relevant for the world of practice: in a time where globalization demands for the relocation of production processes and technology automates several job tasks, the variegated world of arts and crafts, where the handmade abilities and skills of craftsmen cannot be replicate, imitate or standardize, becomes extremely important for the economy of several countries, among which Italy.

At social level, the activity of arts and crafts organizations help preserve the uniqueness and exclusivity of the heritage and culture of the territory where they are located, and reflect the tradition of such territory, the knowhow and ability of its inhabitants and help preserve this unique reservoir of competences and knowhow.

The contribution builds on the lack of practical understanding of the relationship between knowledge and the role played by craftsmen in the knowledge transfer process within arts and crafts organizations, and how effective such process is realized. This because despite the interest of many authors toward both knowledge management and transfer within the creative industry, there is a lack of studies aimed at linking systematically these two research areas. This is a relevant issue since knowledge in creative industries mainly refers to the traditions and values at the basis of an organization’s culture, tends to manifest itself in a tacit way and is difficult to analyze because it mainly exists in the mind of individuals as the result of their working experience not expressed in an explicit form.