Knowledge transfer in multinational corporations

Abstract and Key Results

The importance of language in global teams: A linguistic perspective

Abstract and Key Results

Learning through international acquisitions: The process of knowledge acquisition in China

Abstract and Key Results

The nature and determinants of exclusivity rights in international technology licensing

Existing research on international licensing focuses on firm decisions related to the choice of licensing versus alternative modes of entry into foreign markets, the timing of licensing within the technology life cycle, and appropriate compensation structures to collect rents. This paper complements and extends this stream of research by focusing on decisions related to granting exclusive licensing rights to a technology in foreign markets. The decision surrounding licensing exclusivity is based on the consideration of monopoly rents, technology transfer costs and transaction costs. Factors related to the nature of the technology being licensed, the foreign market environment in which it is licensed, and the characteristics of licensor and licensee firms are likely to influence the choice between exclusive and non-exclusive licensing in a particular foreign market. Propositions developed in the paper incorporate the direct and interaction effects of these three set of variables in predicting exclusivity decisions in international technology licensing.     

Towards a conceptual model of procedural knowledge degradation

Research has derived a dynamic range of theories associated with the acquisition of knowledge. In contrast, the current research seeks mechanisms by which acquired knowledge degrades, as well as mechanisms that could be computationally modelled. For procedural tasks, such as product assembly or supervisory control, variables including interference can inhibit the ability to retrieve procedural knowledge in different ways than the retrieval of declarative knowledge like phone numbers. High consequence tasks, such as air traffic control or maintenance on nuclear weapons, require proficiency to be maintained. Thus, an understanding of mechanisms that might complicate effective performance could improve approaches to job design. To explore theoretical underpinnings for procedural knowledge degradation, three areas of literature were explored. The areas included theoretical, computational, and ecological research. The literature serves as input for a conceptual model of procedural knowledge degradation.     

Effective practices in design transfer

The notion of transferring existing design solutions to new design problems is a basic one. Transfer provides a means of tackling increasing complexity, of limiting risks and costs, and of capitalizing on experience. In practice, in design organizations, it can be hard to judge the outcome of transfer because there can be several, often obscure benefits and drawbacks. This work is therefore an attempt to identify effective practices towards transfer on the part of designers and design managers. It is based on a qualitative analysis of 50 unstructured interviews carried out with members of two commercial design organizations. The practices were classified inductively in 15 main categories, of which the most heavily populated were associativity-improving, criteria-broadening, effort-reducing, environment-influencing, error-averting and motivation-addressing. The results have both a practical relevance (since most of the effective practices could be readily taught to novice designers) and a more theoretical relevance (showing what designers believe makes design transfer problematic).     

The development and sharing of knowledge by Centres of Excellence and transnational teams: A conceptual framework

Abstract and Key Results

Measuring the quality of knowledge work

There is a variety of ways to measure the quality of knowledge work. The best selection for a particular application depends on how the user defines quality and the intended use of the measure. This paper catalogues possible measures according to five different perspectives on quality and four different uses of quality measures. It concludes with some recommendations for measuring quality in a laboratory.     

Computation vs knowledge in materials innovation

The title above reflects a statement by David McCullough, who said, ”Information is a wonderful thing, but it is not knowledge. You wouldn’t be educated if you managed to memorize the entire encyclopedia. You would be weird” [1]. Paralleling this theme, the theoretical physicist, Volker Heine, once said, ”How often have I read a paper about a piece of computational physics which finishes with the words ’and we obtain good agreement with experiment.’ If you know the answer from experiment, I want to cry, why are you wasting so much time calculating it?” Why indeed?     

Developing manufacturing ontologies for knowledge reuse in distributed manufacturing environment

The use of ontologies for knowledge sharing and distributed collaboration has been widely recognised in the knowledge modelling community, but the lack of a systematic and constructive methodology for developing manufacturing ontologies has impeded their wide usage for knowledge reuse in distributed manufacturing environments. This paper presents a constructive, two-level knowledge modelling approach to systematically develop manufacturing ontologies using both software engineering and Semantic Web paradigms. The UML/OCL (Unified Modeling Language/Object Constraint Language)-based object modelling is used first to serve as a graphical and structured basis for conceptual communication between domain experts and knowledge engineers. The OWL/SWRL (Web Ontology Language/Semantic Web Rule Language)-based ontology modelling then extends the UML/OCL-based object models with added semantics using a progressive, semantics-oriented knowledge acquisition method. An illustrative example for manufacturing ontology development in the manufacturing industry for producing electronic connectors is used to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed approach.     

The relative importance of international vis-a-vis national technological spillovers for market share dynamics

The aim of the paper is to investigate the relative importanceof international vis-à-vis national technological linkagesfor international competitiveness for 19 industrial sectors.We estimate a dynamic model with an autoregressive structurein the dependent variable. In the paper competitiveness is capturedboth by cost competitiveness and by technological competitiveness.The main result is that while national linkages have a positiveimpact on the trade balance in several sectors (mostly scaleintensive and specialised suppliers), this is not the case forinternational linkages.     

Computer aided teaching in civil engineering materials science at the University of Stuttgart

During the past five years the Institute of Construction Materials at the University of Stuttgart (IWB) has participated in different projects concerning e-teaching. Amongst other efforts co-workers of IWB have created a set of virtual content concerning concrete technology within a German e-teaching network in civil engineering materials science called “WiBA-Net” (). The content of this network consists of teaching material that is organized at four different levels of granularity. At the most basic level single items (“assets”) are collected. At the second level such assets are arranged into single pages filling one screen. Several pages dealing with aspects of a single topic are ordered into a teaching path at the third level and finally a set of teaching paths forms an entire course at level four. Virtual searching methods are offered on all four levels depending on the state of the user. Besides the mentioned teaching material also virtual communication facilities are offered within the network. During the work on WiBA-Net, which consists of six German Universities, questions concerning the reusability of virtual content, metadata enhancement techniques and the concept of Blended Learning were focused. Educational and didactic aspects have been closely taken into account and quality assuring evaluation methods have been applied. Meanwhile first experiences have been made in real life teaching and learning situations, which give us an idea of future needs and development in the field.     

Interactive knowledge exchanges under complex social relations: A simulation model of a developing country cluster

This is a model of knowledge exchange by informal interaction among agents in a low technology cluster. The paper studies these knowledge exchanges in an environment of complex social relations. This study tests whether the small-world network structure is the most favorable for knowledge exchanges in these environments, and explores the influence of social relations and network distance on magnitude and equity of knowledge diffused. The results show that, when knowledge exchanges are undertaken in environments of complex social relations, a small-world network structure may still be the best network structure facilitating the highest performance, but it is not the best in terms of the most equitable knowledge distribution. The results also confirms that the highest and most equitable knowledge distribution is achieved when there is perfect affinity among the agents. These results contribute to the existing series of studies on efficient network structures for knowledge diffusion, and on the broader literature on the social forces shaping learning and knowledge diffusion.     

The transfer length in concrete structures repaired with composite materials: a survey of some analytical models and simplified approaches

This work focuses on the closed-form solutions for the shear distribution that takes place in the adhesive between composite and concrete in RC structures repaired with composite plates. Three different loading cases are studied. It is shown that the exact shear stress distributions, which are rather complicated, can be simplified to provide very similar expressions in the three studied cases. The main parameters that govern the shear distribution are then clearly highlighted. This leads to an easy understanding of the influence of some geometrical and material parameters on the shear distribution, as illustrated through a parametric study.     

毫瓦级超声功率传递标准的研制

针对各类毫瓦级超声功率计的量值溯源问题,选用压电陶瓷材料,根据其压电效应原理,设计为厚度伸缩振动模式,采用能陷技术及真空镀膜等技术工艺,制作了一系列1MHz、3MHz、5MHz的园片形单元超声换能器,并研制与之配套的阻抗匹配器,与功率信号源等,组成一套毫瓦级超声功率传递标准。该套标准经济实用、性能可靠稳定,重复性好,有效地解决了毫瓦级超声功率计的量值溯源问题。     

An ethnographic study of design knowledge reuse in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry

This paper presents an ethnographic study of knowledge reuse in the architecture/engineering/construction industry. Reuse occurs largely through social knowledge networks. Even when reuse from an external repository occurs, a human expert is needed to provide input on what to reuse and contextual information about the designs being reused. This is attributed to the effectiveness of internal knowledge reuse, the reuse of knowledge from one’s personal experiences. Internal knowledge reuse is effective because the designer can find items to reuse, and can recall the context of these items and can therefore understand them. This ethnographic study was used to develop a corporate memory, a rich, detailed repository of knowledge in context. The corporate memory will support finding and understanding. Understanding can be brought about by enabling the designer to explore the item’s context. This helps the designer to manage the tradeoff between productivity and creativity in deciding what to reuse.     

The knowledge and its application: Materials Engineering and Structural Integrity. Brief review of the Spanish case and contributions from Prof. Elices

Within the framework of this special issue in honour of Prof. Manuel Elices, the authors present some reflections concerning research, knowledge, its management and its relation with industry and society. The intention is to emphasize the pioneering and enterprising aspects of the Prof. Elices career, given that it has stood out not only for its scientific excellence, but also for establishing in Spain several decades ago a model of interaction between university and industry with high consequences in knowledge management and progress. This paper particularises the presentation to Materials Science and Engineering, and more specifically, to Fracture Mechanics and Structural Integrity, gathering examples of how these Scientific and Engineering Disciplines had provided new knowledge and tools for the treatment of industrial and social problems worldwide.     

Creep rupture life prediction of high-temperature titanium alloy using cross-material transfer learning

High-temperature titanium alloys are the key materials for the components in aerospace and their service life depends largely on creep deformation-induced failure.However,the prediction of creep rupture life remains a challenge due to the lack of available data with well-characterized target property.Here,we proposed two cross-materials transfer learning(TL)strategies to improve the prediction of creep rupture life of high-temperature titanium alloys.Both strategies effectively utilized the knowledge or information encoded in the large dataset(753 samples)of Fe-base,Ni-base,and Co-base superalloys to enhance the surrogate model for small dataset(88 samples)of high-temperature titanium alloys.The first strategy transferred the parameters of the convolutional neural network while the second strategy fused the two datasets.The performances of the TL models were demonstrated on different test datasets with varying sizes outside the training dataset.Our TL models improved the predictions greatly compared to the mod-els obtained by straightly applying five commonly employed algorithms on high-temperature titanium alloys.This work may stimulate the use of TL-based models to accurately predict the service properties of structural materials where the available data is small and sparse.     

Discrepancies between knowledge and practice of childhood motor vehicle occupant safety in Nova Scotia—A population-based study

Objectives

To determine discrepancies between knowledge and practice of childhood motor vehicle restraints (CMVRs) and vehicle seating position amongst parents within the province of Nova Scotia.

Design

Random telephone survey.

Setting

The Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

Subjects

Four hundred and twenty-six households with at least one child under the age of 12 years, totaling 723 children.

Main outcome measures

The proportion of parents whose children who should be in a specific stage of CMVR and sitting in the rear seat of the vehicle, and who demonstrate correct knowledge of that restraint system and seating position, yet do not use that restraint system/seating position for their child (demonstrate practice discrepant from their knowledge).

Results

Awareness of what restraint system to use is good (>80%). However, knowledge of when it is safe to graduate to the next stage is low (30–55%), most marked for when to use a seatbelt alone. Awareness of the importance of sitting in the rear seat of a vehicle was universal. Discrepancies between knowledge and practice were most marked with booster seats and rear-seating of older children. Factors influencing incorrect practice (prematurely graduated to a higher-level restraint system than what is appropriate for age and weight) included lower household income, caregiver education level, and knowledge of when to graduate from forward-facing car seats and booster seats. Incorrect practice was also more commonly observed amongst children of weight and/or age approaching (but not yet reaching) recommended graduation parameters of the appropriate CMVR.

Conclusions

Discrepancies between knowledge and practice are evident through all stages of CMVRs, but most marked with booster seats. The roles of lower socioeconomic status and gaps in CMVR legislation, in influencing discrepant practice, must be acknowledged and suggest the need for targeted education concurrent with development of comprehensive all-stages CMVR policies.