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Scholars in strategy, economics, and sociology of science and technology have studied technology development as a source of firms’ economic gains as well as institutional changes. Drawing on the extant research of technology and innovation strategy, I investigate the problem of knowledge generation and flows in technology development. Specifically, I explore how firms generate novel technology and develop technological breakthroughs; how knowledge flows between firms affect interfirm cooperation in a knowledge network; and how science and technology programs impact the institutions of knowledge production. In Essay 1 (Chapter 2), I examine the antecedents of knowledge recombination and technological breakthroughs. Conceptualizing a firm’s exploration as a combinatory search of prior new-recombination (an original technology component), I investigate the impacts of prior new-recombination and search boundary (local vs. boundary-spanning) on the characteristics of focal invention. In particular, I theorize and juxtapose the contrasting effects of the boundary of technological search of prior new-recombination on the propensities that the focal invention generates new recombination and becomes a technological breakthrough. Specifically, I hypothesize that, when the technological search involves new recombination in prior inventions, 1) the likelihood of generating new recombination in the focal invention is greatest for a boundary spanning search, smallest for a local search, and intermediate for a hybrid search (which involves both types of search); but 2) the likelihood for the focal invention to become a technological breakthrough is greatest for a local search, smallest for a boundary spanning search, and intermediate for a hybrid search. I find supporting evidence from the analysis of U.S. nanotechnology patents granted between 1980 and 2006. The purpose of Essay 2 (Chapter 3) is to determine the effect of knowledge flows on the formation of interfirm cooperation. By distinguishing codified knowledge flows from tacit knowledge flows, this paper demonstrates that antecedents of interfirm cooperation lie in codified knowledge flows that precede interfirm cooperation. Two properties of asymmetry in directional codified knowledge flows, intensity and uncertainty, underpin this paper’s arguments and empirical tests. The main finding in this study is that intense codified knowledge flows weaken the formation of interfirm cooperation. By mapping dyadic firms to a center and a periphery firm within a knowledge network, I theorize that the uncertainty of directional codified knowledge flows induces the center and the periphery firms to pursue interfirm cooperation differently. The results show that while uncertainty caused by distant technology components in knowledge flows hinders a center firm from pursuing interfirm cooperation, uncertainty stimulates a periphery firm to pursue interfirm cooperation. A statistical analysis performed on a sample of enterprise software firms between 1992 and 2009 supports the hypotheses of this paper. In Essay 3 (Chapter 4), I examine how the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a most recent U.S. government’s science and technology (S&T) program launched in 2000, impacts the nature of university research in nanotechnology. I characterize the NNI as a policy intervention that targets the commercialization of technology and a focused research direction to promote national economic growth. As such, I expect that the NNI has brought about unintended consequences in terms of the direction of university-industry knowledge flows and the characteristics of university research output in nanotechnology. Using the difference-in-differences analysis of the U.S. nanotechnology patents filed between 1996 and 2007, I find that, for the U.S. universities, the NNI has increased knowledge inflows from the industry, diminished the branching-out to novel technologies, reduced the research scope, and decreased the likelihood of technological breakthroughs, as compared to other U.S. and non-U.S. research institutions. The findings suggest that, at least in the case of the NNI, targeted S&T programs of the government may increase the efficiency of university research, but potentially do so at a considerable price.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-22T20:49:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2008-11-26 / Este trabalho verifica a capacidade de uma organização em empreender projetos; identificando se a mesma tem processos de gerenciamento organizacional de projetos e como implementa esse gerenciamento através de melhores práticas, aceitas mundialmente. Para tanto, foi realizada a aplicação do modelo OPM3® em organização de saúde, o qual consiste de um aplicativo de software com 151 questões que elabora relatórios e gráficos da existência ou não dessas melhores práticas. Aplicado em uma organização multinacional, reconhecida internacionalmente como de excelência em gerenciamento de projetos, obtendo um alto grau de maturidade que pode servir como balizador para outras organizações. / This work verify the capacity of an organization to undertake projects, and as to identify if the organization it has processes of management and as to implement this project management through currently accepted of world-wide form. For in such a way, the application of model OPM3® in health organization was carried through, which consists of an applicatory one of software with 151 questions that elaborates reports and graphs of the existence or not of these best practices. Applied in a multinational organization, recognized internationally as of excellence in management project, getting one high degree of maturity that can serve as maker for other organizations. / TEDE / BV UNIFESP: Teses e dissertações

While New Public Management practices (NPM) have been adopted in academia and higher education over the past two decades, this paper is investigating their role in a specifically socio-philosophical way: The preeminent question is what organization of science is likely to make science and research work well in the context of a complex society. The starting point is an obvious intuition: that academia would be “economized” by NPM (basically, that something is coming from the outside and is disturbing the inside). Habermas provides a sophisticated theorization for this intuition. In contrast, the thesis advanced here is that we should consider NPM potentially problematic—but not for descending from economics or administration outside academia. It is because NPM often cannot help research and science to function well. In this (rather “essayistic” than strictly deductive) consideration, I will therefore tentatively discuss an alternative approach that takes up critical intuitions while transposing them into a different setting. If we understand science and research as a form of life, a different picture emerges that can still bring immanent standards to bear, but at the same time compose them more broadly. This outlines a socio-philosophical critique of NPM. Accordingly, the decisive factor is not NPM's provenance. What is decisive is that it addresses some organizational problems while at the same time creating new ones. At the end, an outlook is sketched on how the specific situation of NPM allows some hypotheses on academy's [by “academy”, I am referring to the whole research community (like “academia”)] future organization. Ex negativo, it seems likely that qualitative evaluation criteria and creative freedom will have to play a greater role.

This research explores the relationship between the organisational culture and financial performance of a South African investment bank by means of quantitative research. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey was used to measure the organisational culture of the investment bank and was administered to a sample of 327 employees. Income statement ratio analysis was selected as a means to assess the financial performance. The results indicate that very few of the financial measures selected could be shown to be correlated with the organisational cultural traits or subscales. Correlations between the cultural dimensions of team orientation, agreement, customer focus and vision were found with certain financial measures. Although these correlations were above the 0.50 level, the levels of significance were not sufficient in all cases to draw conclusions with confidence. The only cultural trait that was found to be correlated with financial measures was the consistency trait. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

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This research explores the relationship between the organisational culture and financial performance of a South African investment bank by means of quantitative research. The Denison Organizational Culture Survey was used to measure the organisational culture of the investment bank and was administered to a sample of 327 employees. Income statement ratio analysis was selected as a means to assess the financial performance. The results indicate that very few of the financial measures selected could be shown to be correlated with the organisational cultural traits or subscales. Correlations between the cultural dimensions of team orientation, agreement, customer focus and vision were found with certain financial measures. Although these correlations were above the 0.50 level, the levels of significance were not sufficient in all cases to draw conclusions with confidence. The only cultural trait that was found to be correlated with financial measures was the consistency trait. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

Behavioral operations management (BOM) has gained popularity in the last two decades. The main theme in this new stream of research is to include the human behavior in Operations Management (OM) models to increase the effectiveness of such models. BOM is classified into 4 areas: cognitive psychology, social psychology, group dynamics and system dynamics (Bendoly et al. 2010). This dissertation will focus on the first class, namely cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is further classified into heuristics and biases. Tversky and Kahneman (1974) discussed 3 heuristics and 13 cognitive biases that usually face decision makers. This dissertation is going to study 6 cognitive biases under the representativeness heuristic. The model in this dissertation states that cognitive reflection of the individual (Frederick 2005) and training about cognitive biases in the form of warning (Kaufmann and Michel 2009) will help decisions’ makers make less biased decisions. The 6 cognitive biases investigated in this dissertation are insensitivity to prior probability, insensitivity to sample size, misconception of chance, insensitivity to predictability, the illusion of validity and misconception of regression. 6 scenarios in OM contexts have been used in this study. Each scenario corresponds to one cognitive bias. Experimental design has been used as the research tool. To see the impact of training, one group of the participants received the scenarios without training and the other group received them with training. The training consists of a brief description of the cognitive bias as well as an example of the cognitive bias. Cognitive reflection is operationalized using cognitive reflection test (CRT). The survey was distributed to students at University of North Texas (UNT). Logistic regression has been employed to analyze data. The research shows that participants show the cognitive biases proposed by Tversky and Kahneman. Moreover, CRT is significant factor to predict the cognitive bias in two scenarios. Finally, providing training in terms of warning helps participants to make more rational decisions in 4 scenarios. This means that although cognitive biases are inherent in the mind of people, management of corporations has the tool to educate its managers and professionals about such biases which helps companies make more rational decisions.

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