The Social‐Cognitive Underpinnings of Employees’ Ambidextrous Behaviour and the Supportive Role of Group Managers’ Leadership

Although research on organizational ambidexterity has exploded in the past several years, the determinants of individual‐level ambidexterity have received little scholarly attention. This is surprising given that management scholars increasingly highlight the benefits of combining explorative and exploitative activities in individual employees’ work roles. Using data collected by a two‐wave survey of 638 employees nested in 173 groups across 34 organizations, our research demonstrates that both psychological factors and leadership predict employees’ ambidextrous behaviour. Our results demonstrate that general self‐efficacy positively predicts ambidextrous behaviour through learning orientation. In addition, we show that employees exhibit higher ambidexterity when their group managers demonstrate paradoxical leadership; that is, a leadership style that couples strong managerial support with high performance expectations. Paradoxical leadership also moderates the relationship between learning orientation and individual ambidexterity such that employees’ ambidextrous behaviour is highest when paradoxical leadership and employee learning orientation are simultaneously at high levels.     

Managing Organizational Knowledge Integration in the Emerging Multimedia Complex

Due to technological convergence, complexes of interrelated industries are emerging. This paper presents a conceptual framework of the role different organizational forms and combinative capabilities play in the management of organizational knowledge integration in this context. The focus is on firms previously operating in one of the relatively stable constituting industries. We argue that a firm's organizational form has to be matched with appropriate combinative capabilities in order to integrate component knowledge into architectural knowledge that consequently serves as a platform for generating new product–market combinations. The framework is empirically illustrated using the example of two Dutch publishing firms moving into the multimedia complex, which is currently emerging around information and communication technologies. The empirical analysis shows that the framework offers strong potential for improving the understanding of the complex process of organizational knowledge integration, as the prerequisite for developing new business in an emerging industrial complex.     

World Cities and the Uneven Geographies of Financialization: Unveiling Stratification and Hierarchy in the World City Archipelago

This article critically evaluates the network‐centrism of much of contemporary world cities research and queries its capacity to unveil key accumulation processes under financialized globalization. Our object of inquiry is the world city archipelago (WCA), a material yet non‐contiguous space of world city ‘islands', which is (re)produced through the socio‐spatial practices of advanced producer services (APS) firms as they assist in constructing (financial) accumulation strategies for their clients. Scrutinizing the WCA with a singular focus on networks can veil dynamics that lead to internal stratification and hierarchy between world cities and their constitutive outside. Alternatively, these veiled dimensions are better grasped by territorial, scalar and place‐based abstractions. As an example, we unveil WCA space by studying the space of APS practices in three recent cases of Eurobond issuance. By comparing these three instances through an encompassing approach, a bounded geography of a financialized accumulation space is identified, which contains London and other world cities as a necessary space of dependence but also stretches out to various contingent spaces of engagement at the fringes of the WCA network: offshore jurisdictions and places of debt origination. We conclude by making the case for a heightened sensitivity in respect of core–periphery structures that exist between the WCA and its outside, but also within the WCA itself.     

The process and experiences with creating user-driven innovation programmes in the Netherlands1

In 2005 the Netherlands drafted a new innovation policy, consisting of a basic package for all entrepreneurs and a programme-based package aimed at supporting the Dutch industry in achieving global excellence in a limited number of (business) areas. The programme-based package is characterized by an integral approach, resulting in user-driven public–private innovation programmes. In the new approach, industrial foresight processes are integrated with actual policy implementation. In this paper, we include the lessons learned during the process that led to the first innovation programmes. Also, some unresolved issues in the new approach are discussed.     

Industry eco-innovation strategies for process upgrading: systemic limits of internalising externalities

Industry has been upgrading its production processes through eco-innovation combining environmental and economic benefits, thus reducing some resource burdens which otherwise lie outside economic accounting. Some companies have shown interest in evaluating investment options for resource burdens and total value added across a whole-system value chain. Our EC research project developed a method for whole-system assessment of eco-innovation with multi-stakeholder cooperation. In three cases presented here, tensions arise among various aims, resource burdens, system levels, beneficiaries and timescales, thus complicating the concept of eco-innovation as a win–win strategy. Radical eco-innovation would depend on extra functions, value-chain actors and resource usages which can provide greater overall benefits. But such investment faces many systemic obstacles. Eco-innovation remains path dependent, thus limiting the scope to internalise environmental externalities. The tensions and difficulties cast doubt on an EC strategy emphasising uptake of eco-innovative technologies as the means to decouple economic growth from resource burdens.     

How connected are Chinese farmers to retail markets? New evidence of price transmission

This paper examines the extent to which Chinese farmers are connected to regional agricultural markets by looking at the intensity of price transmission from retail markets to the farmgate. This intensity is indicative of the extent to which farmers might benefit from improved marketing opportunities and be exposed to price risks. We estimate the elasticity of farmgate prices to retail prices using price data for 170 markets, in 29 out of 33 provinces of China, at the detail of 12 main products and for the five-year period 1996 to 2000. In each province we find strong linkages between retail and farmgate prices with elasticities ranging between 0.6 and 1 and intensifying over time. This suggests that Chinese farmers are generally well connected to retail markets and that this connectivity has strengthened in the period considered, creating not only new opportunities but also new risks. It is also found that linkages are relatively weak in inland provinces, which is a point of concern in view of Chinese policies to create equal opportunities and equitable growth.     

A sampled literature review of design-based learning approaches: a search for key characteristics

Design-based learning (DBL) is an educational approach grounded in the processes of inquiry and reasoning towards generating innovative artifacts, systems and solutions. The approach is well characterized in the context of learning natural sciences in secondary education. Less is known, however, of its characteristics in the context of higher engineering education. The purpose of this review study is to identify key characteristics of DBL in higher engineering education. From the tenets of engineering design practices and higher engineering education contexts we identified four relevant dimensions for organizing these characteristics: the project characteristics, the role of the teacher, the assessment methods, and the social context. Drawing on these four dimensions, we systematically reviewed the state-of-the-art empirical literature on DBL or DBL-like educational projects in higher engineering education. Based on this review we conclude that DBL projects consist of open-ended, hands-on, authentic and multidisciplinary design tasks resembling the community of engineering professionals. Teachers facilitate both the process of gaining domain-specific knowledge and the thinking activities relevant to propose innovative solutions. Teachers scaffold students in the development from novice to expert engineers. Assessment is characterized by formative and summative of both individual and team products and processes and by the use of a variety of assessment instruments. Finally, the social context of DBL projects includes peer-to-peer collaboration in which students work in teams. The implications of these findings for further research on DBL in higher engineering education are discussed.     

Towards a Closed Phosphorus Cycle

This paper stresses the need to address upcoming scarcity of phosphorus, a mineral nutrient that is essential for all life on Earth. Agricultural crops obtain phosphorus from the pool in the soil that can be replenished by recycling of organic material, or by application of inorganic fertilizer, originating from mines, largely concentrated in three countries only: Morocco/Western Sahara, China and USA. A complicating factor is that the phosphorus rock contains other substances as well, including the heavy metals cadmium and uranium. These substances currently end up in fertilizer and in phosphogypsum where they may pose threats to human and animal health. Hence scarcity and environmental considerations call for action to close the phosphorus cycle. The paper compares two options for intervention: mandatory recycling versus a ban on imports of contaminated phosphorus, and argues in favor of the second.     

Multimarket and multiproject collusion

Summary If firms meet in a number of markets, they may respond to an action in one market by reacting in another market. Fear for such retaliation may induce multimarket firms to collude across markets. The paper assesses available theoretical and empirical evidence on the multimarket collusion theory. Moreover, the paper suggests that the theory can be fruitfully applied in the context of European integration. The focus is on collusion by firms which meet in product markets as well as in joint R&D projects. A model develops three propositions, which shed light on the subsequently provided (tentative) evidence on multidimensional contact in an integrating Europe. The discussion may serve as a framework for future research into both the theoretical and the empirical domain with applications to the issue of European integration.We gratefully acknowledge John Hagedoorn for providing access to the MERIT/CATI database, and two referees for their comments. Of course, the usual disclaimer applies