Knowledge is a necessary and critically important factor in generating growth and increased prosperity. The extent to which such effects are materialized depends however on its diffusion and how it transcends into innovation, entrepreneurship and growing firms. This doctoral thesis consists of four papers that examine how labor mobility and innovation strategies influence the performance at the firm level with respect to new ventures, firm level growth and innovativeness.   The first paper provides empirical support of the validity of the knowledge-based spillover theory of entrepreneurship by employing a detailed database. The results indicate that both inter-regional labor inflows and intra-regional labor mobility exert a strong positive effect on entrepreneurship, while inter-regional outflows negatively affect entrepreneurial entry.   The second paper examines the influence of the labor mobility of knowledge workers on innovation at the firm level. New evidence are provided that reveals a positive and significant impact of labor mobility on firms’ innovations measured as patent applications.   In the third paper the influence of labor mobility between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and other firms on innovation is investigated. Looking at firms having different owner structures, empirical evidence are provided that particularly domestically owned MNEs generate strong knowledge spillovers to non-MNEs that translates into innovations.   The fourth paper examines the relationship between innovation and firm growth. We implement a classification of innovations based on whether they are explorative or exploitative. The more radical explorative innovations are shown to have a persistent growth effect in the long term, while exploitative innovation increases the labor demand predominantly in the short term. / <p>QC 20160401</p>

Bakgrund och problem: Lärande inom organisationer har effekt på hur organisationer hanterar förändring och anpassar sin organisation för en förbättrad effektivitet, vilket kan leda till konkurrensfördelar. Det är intressant att se på ideella organisationer och deras lärande funktion då organisationsformen skiljer sig från den privata sektorn där företag i större utsträckning arbetar med lärande mer strukturellt medan ideella organisationer ofta baserar sin lärande funktion på lösa samtal. Vår undersökning tar avstamp från detta och mer specifikt i den ideella organisationen KFUM Sverige. Eftersom det är en organisation som sysslar med en rad olika aktiviteter har vi valt att smala av undersökningsområdet till de basketföreningar som har koppling till KFUM. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur KFUM arbetar som lärande organisation och hur de lokala KFUM-basketföreningarna har arbetat för att öka medlemsantalet. Potentiellt kan vi få en bild av hur en ideell organisation arbetar som en lärande organisation och huruvida de tar tillvara på intern kunskapsförmedling mellan sina underföreningar. Metod: Vår studie grundar sig i en djupare förståelse för dels människors agerande men även rutiner och arbetssätt inom olika föreningar, valde vi att genomföra intervjuer med personer från basketföreningar med KFUM-anknytning samt en intervju med personen som arbetar som kommunikationsansvarig hos KFUM Sverige, vars arbetsuppgifter behandlar kommunikation med KFUM:s föreningar i hela Sverige. Resultat och slutsats: Efter genomförd studie kan vi dra slutsatserna att KFUM:s basketföreningar är förändringsbenägna och de arbetar som lärande organisationer på individuell nivå men att KFUM Sverige, på nationell nivå, har brister i sin lärande förmåga. Vi anser att detta skulle kunna förbättras genom införande av system som gynnar kunskapsdelning och att organisationen i sig behöver arbeta för att förbättra sin organisatoriska identitet då detta är ett sätt för organisationen att få en organisationskultur som främjar lärande mellan de lokala föreningarna.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Many organisations are perusing a process improvement programme in order to gain competitive advantage through improved product and service quality, operational efficiencies and customer experience. Whilst Six Sigma adopts a project-oriented, expert-led approach to improving processes, Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean and Operational Excellence (OE) programmes typically promote a culture of Continuous Improvement (CI) where lower-level employees are encouraged and empowered to evaluate and optimise their own working practices and processes. In order to make CI successful and sustainable in an organisation, employees need to have a positive attitude towards CI. Whilst previous research had already established the relationship between CI, Organisational Learning (OL) and company performance, this research set out to establish if any of the five disciplines of the Senge (1994) Learning Organisation (LO) influenced on an employee’s (positive) attitude towards CI. In keeping with the Dimensions of the Learning Organisation Questionnaire (DLOQ), the five disciplines of the LO were structured within individual, team and organisational factors. Through a structured survey and statistical correlation analysis, this research has shown that, whilst the team and organisational factors did not influence on an employee’s attitude to CI, personal mastery does have an influence on an employee’s attitude towards CI. It is therefore recommended that an organisation that wishes to create a culture of CI also actively works to improve the personal mastery of those employees who are expected to be involved in CI.

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Public sector organizations are in need of new approaches to development and innovation. There is a need to develop a capability to better understand priorities, needs and wishes of public sector service users and become more proactive, in order to meet the demands on keeping costs down and quality high. Design is increasingly put forward as a potential answer to this need and there are many initiatives taken across the world to encourage the use of a design approach to development and innovation within public sector. In relation to this trend there is a need to improve the understanding of how public sector organizations develop ability to exploit design; how they develop design capability. This is the focus of this thesis, which through an exploratory study has observed the two initiatives aiming to introduce design and develop design capability within healthcare and social service organizations. One main contribution of this work is an understanding of the design capability concept based on a structured review of the use of the design capability concept in the literature. The concept has previously been used in relation to different aspects of designs in organizations. Another important contribution is the development of an understanding for how design capability is developed based on interpretations founded in the organizational learning perspective of absorptive capacity. The study has identified how different antecedents to development of design capability have influenced this development in the two cases. The findings have identified aspects that both support and impede the development of design capability which are important to acknowledge and address when aiming to develop design capability within a public sector organization. In both cases, the set up of the knowledge transferring efforts focus mainly on developing awareness of design. Similar patterns are seen in other prior and parallel initiatives. The findings however suggest that it is also important to ensure that the organization have access to design competence and that structures like routines, processes and culture support and enable the use of design practice, in order to make design a natural part of the continuous development work.

Purpose – The purpose of this thesis is to explore the capability of Swedish regional public transport authorities (RPTAs) to organize public transport so that it stimulates the intended value creation process needed to increase users’ positive experience. Design/methodology/approach – This thesis utilizes an interpretative research approach. Two empirical studies, resulting in two papers have been used in this thesis. Study I consists of a quantitative Kano questionnaire with 930 respondents. Study II comprises a qualitative study with 11 semi-structured interviews. Both studies have been equally necessary to the results of this thesis. Findings – Public transport is one of the few public services with a mandate to attract users, and therefore, this thesis suggests that Swedish public transport organizations must understand how various services in multiple dimensions affect users’ preferences for public transport. With this understanding, public transport organizations can effectively and efficiently allocate resources and increase the appeal of future public transport. Such a focus demands a deep organizational knowledge and understanding of customer needs and detailed awareness of how the achievement of various requirements affects customers. This thesis shows that organizational structures are based on political comprises rather then the needs to solve coordination challenges and facilitate customers’ value creation. It is further argued that the organizational structures and personal or impersonal information processing mechanisms in Swedish public transport influence the search for information and subsequent organizational learning influencing the RPTAs’ capabilities to include and understand public transport users’ needs. This thesis offers insight into how public organizations, such as Swedish public transport authorities, can make decisions in structural design to learn from customer perceptions and adapt organizational policy accordingly.  In addition, I argue that RPTAs must employ both exploitative and exploratory learning to improve their capabilities and increase their efficiency and effectiveness. This thesis also provides a model to describe these relationships. Originality/value – Unlike previous studies, this thesis shows how organizational structures are decided based on political compromises rather than the need for coordination. This thesis offers insight into how public organizations, such as Swedish public transport authorities, can make decisions in structural design to learn from customer perceptions and adapt organizational policy accordingly. / Public transport is one of the few public services with a mandate to attract users, and therefore, this thesis suggests that Swedish public transport organizations must understand how various services in multiple dimensions affect users’ preferences for public transport. With this understanding, public transport organizations can effectively and efficiently allocate resources and increase the appeal of future public transport. Such an approach requires not only a deep organizational knowledge of customer needs, but also a detailed knowledge of how the achievement of the various demands affects users and their value creation. This thesis further shows that organizational structures are based on political comprises rather then the needs to solve coordination challenges and facilitate customers’ value creation. It is here argued that the organizational structures and personal or impersonal information processing mechanisms in Swedish public transport influence the search for information and subsequent organizational learning influencing the RPTAs’ capabilities to include and understand public transport users’ needs. This thesis offers insight into how public organizations, such as Swedish public transport authorities, can make decisions in structural design to learn from customer perceptions and adapt organizational policy accordingly.

Abstract THE IMPACT OF ENABLING SCHOOL STRUCTURES ON THE DEGREE OF INTERNAL SCHOOL CHANGE AS MEASURED BY THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES By Joseph D. Tylus, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2009 Major Director: Dr. William C. Bosher Distinguished Professor, G. Wilder School of Policy Adjunct Professor, VCU School of Education This non-experimental, correlational study looked at the relationship between bureaucratic structures in middle and high schools in bringing about change in individual teacher classroom instructional practices through the centralized directive of membership in a professional learning community. Using a continuum of bureaucratic structure, from enabling to hindering, designed by Hoy and Sweetland (2001), each teacher identified the type of bureaucratic structure they believed they operated within. The teacher participants responded to a questionnaire on how involved they were and to what degree they participated with colleagues in a professional learning community during the current school year. Further, they were asked how membership in a professional learning community influenced, if at all, their instructional practices. A regression analysis showed a statistically significant relationship between enabling bureaucratic structure and a higher degree of teacher personal professional growth. A regression analysis also demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between enabling bureaucratic structure and change in instructional practices in the classroom associated with membership in a professional learning community. However, while the analyses found statistical significance, the actual effect size was low, challenging the level of practical significance of the model. One interaction of interest related to teachers who teach courses where there is a state mandated end-of-course test that impacts the school’s adequate yearly progress (AYP) rating. Teachers in this group reported the highest level of change in their classroom instructional practices through membership in a professional learning community when they perceived a more enabling bureaucratic structure for the school in which they worked. Hopefully these results will help encourage future work that pertains to which bureaucratic structures are most effective in producing change in the classroom through the use of professional learning communities. The dissertation was created using Microsoft Word 2003.

D.Com. / Innovation mostly happens tacitly. Organisations do not usually explicate innovative thinking and behaviour in business processes and models. The thesis stresses the importance of seeing learning and innovation as dynamically linked processes consisting of different episodes. Innovators and innovation managers should be able to identify the unintended and intended messages in the different episodes of the learning and innovation process and decide upon the usefulness by further eliciting, sharing and shaping tacit knowing and being for innovation...

Background: Today’s global social and environmental issues are impacting the way of doing business around the world with an increased pressure on organizations to implement sustainability practices in a more strategic manner. Many organizations lack the practical knowledge to integrate sustainability efficiently. Scholars argue for the importance of organizational learning for the transition towards sustainable corporations. While the problem is evident across industries, dealing with the problem effectively is particularly important within the property sector since property development is a fundamental part of building a sustainable society, hence crucial for Sweden’s achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Purpose: To analyze the management of organizational learning for the integration of corporate sustainability in organizations within the Swedish property sector. Method: By using a qualitative research methodology with a single-case study of a Swedish property management firm, in-depth empirics could be collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with members of the organization from various departments and positions, and across regions. An abductive approach was applied where we used and extended previous theory before presenting a final model where theory and findings were aligned. Conclusion: Our model showed how organizational learning can be managed for the integration of corporate sustainability across different levels of an organization – individual and group, organizational, and societal where various practices where identified on each level – see Figure 7. / Bakgrund: Företag runt om i världen står inför en utmaning att implementera hållbarhetsfrågor på ett mer strategiskt sätt för att hantera de globala sociala och miljömässiga aspekterna inom hållbarhet. Många organisationer saknar den praktiska kunskapen att integrera hållbarhet effektivt. Enligt forskning är organisatoriskt lärande viktigt för övergången till mer hållbara företag. Även om problemet är tydligt inom alla industrier, så är det speciellt viktigt för företag inom fastighetsbranschen att integrera hållbarhet då fastighetsutveckling är en grundpelare för att bygga ett hållbart samhälle. Följaktligen innebär detta att fastighetsbranschens hållbarhetsarbete är kritisk för Sveriges möjlighet att uppnå de 17 globala målen och utförandet av Handlingsplan Agenda 2030. Syfte: Att analysera hur organisatoriskt lärande kan hanteras för att integrera hållbarhet i organisationer inom den svenska fastighetsbranschen. Metod: Genom att använda oss av en kvalitativ forskningsmetod med en fallstudie av ett svenskt fastighetsbolag samlades djupgående empiri in från semi-strukturerade intervjuer som hölls med medlemmar ur organisationen från olika avdelningar, roller och regioner. Med ett abduktivt tillvägagångssätt till forskningsarbetet använde och utvecklade vi tidigare teori innan vi presenterade en slutlig modell där teori och empiri sammanställdes. Slutsats: Vår modell visar hur organisatoriskt lärande kan hanteras över olika organisatoriska nivåer av ett företag – individ och grupp, organisation, och samhälle – för att integrera hållbarhet genom olika tillämpningar, se figur 7.

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Lowenhaupt / This qualitative study examined the organizational learning mechanisms (OLMs) used by school district educational leaders to improve the implementation of curriculum reform. This portion of the study focused on the OLMs used by central office boundary spanners to help school principals implement curriculum reform chosen by school district leaders. Drawing from interview and document data analysis, the results of this study indicated that OLMs used by central office boundary spanners are critical to the successful implementation of school reform. Examples of the OLMs used by central office boundary spanners included utilizing online technology and providing whole and small group support as well as individualized coaching to help school principals implement curriculum reform. Frequent communication, collaborative opportunities, and consistent messaging with school principals surfaced as the key OLM techniques used by central office boundary spanners to consistently improve the implementation of school reform. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.