Chan, P W; Grantham, A; Kaplinsky, R; Mynors, D; Mohamed, S; Walsh, K and Coles, R (2006) A taxonomy of knowledge leakage: Some early developments. In: Boyd, D (ed.) Proceedings of 22nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2006, Birmingham, UK.
Abstract
The shift towards more knowledge-intensive work in the UK and growing trends of globalisation and outsourcing to other countries necessitates a rethink of the role of knowledge in practice. The UK also lags behind such developed economies as the USA and mainland Europe in terms of its productivity. This research represents a multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral, UK government-funded project attempting to dissect the nature of knowledge and its impacts on the UK productivity gap. The central tenet is that knowledge flows between and within firms can have both positive and negative ramifications on the firm's productivity. The overarching research aims to develop a framework to explain how these knowledge flows bear consequences to a firm's long-term competitiveness and productivity, which should enable practitioners to map out, and optimise, their knowledge flows. This paper reports on the initial phase of the research, comprising a desk-top literature survey and a series of exploratory interviews with senior managers across a range of sectors covering both construction and manufacturing. Early findings show that knowledge leakage occurs through dynamic interactions between organisations and their suppliers, customers, competitors, non-competitive collaborators and human resources.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | competitiveness; knowledge leakage; productivity; taxonomy |
| Index terms: | human resource, competitiveness, globalization, practitioner, taxonomy, interaction, knowledge flow, interview, manager, Europe, outsourcing, productivity, survey |
| Subjects: | practitioner, business, data collection methods, knowledge management, data analysis and analytics, management, physical geography and landforms, behavioral psychology, economic factors, market analysis |
| Topics: | International Construction, Human Resources, Procurement, Roles and Professions, Information Management, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Business Strategy |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here