Journal of the Knowledge Economy最新文献

This paper aims to verify how communities of practice influence the development of innovations in the gastronomy sector. Primary data were collected at the interval of 1 year and achieved an amount of ten interviews using an unstructured interview with an in-depth interview with renowned chefs with parallel academic careers. To collect the data, the researcher adopted a snowball method, where the interviewees were motivated to indicate another participant until the study achieves theoretical saturation. The data were analysed using grounded theory through the analysis of incidents in three cycles of coding (open, axial, and selective), which enabled the generation of data-driven and theory-driven categories. The findings showed that chefs use their communities of practice to obtain the tacit and explicit knowledge they need to innovate in their menus. This study provides as practical implications a description of how chefs deal with sharing knowledge when they are thinking about menu modifications and how they obtained the necessary tacit and explicit knowledge to innovate in their menus to keep them up to date to the competitive marketing. The study carried out presents the process of obtaining knowledge using the community of practice by chefs to innovate in their menus.

Global value chains (GVC) framework provides an analytical tool to unravel development and upgrading trajectories for businesses from catching-up economies. At the same time, the catching-up literature tends to portray the upgrading in emerging economies as a gradual and linear process. Considering the digital transformation-driven trends in global value chains (GVCs) and the rise of new emerging industries, we show how small start-ups from catching-up economies can redefine the traditional pathways for entering and upgrading in GVCs. Based on three cases from the automated mobility and delivery industry in Estonia, we show how small start-up companies can achieve rapid global outreach not only via functional but also product-related, inter-sectoral, and end-market upgrading by specializing in novel niche value propositions and by building business models around digital platforms to reap the benefits from the network effects. As a result, the analysed companies have not faced established and occupied value chains, where latecomer manufacturers tend to enter, but have managed to shape and control their value chains by directing the developments on local as well as international levels, and paradoxically, without much policy support.

This paper investigates the impact of government policy consistency on firm innovation. We utilize the information about the firm’s self-evaluation of the government policy consistency in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys only available from 2002 to 2006. Controlling for endogeneity problem, our regression results show that the effects of government policy consistency on innovation decisions are heterogeneous in terms of firms’ size and location classified by the income level and region. These findings indicate that in countries with a high prevalence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and lower income levels, a flexible policy mix that maintains consistency while promoting adaptability is more effective in fostering firm innovation. This is particularly crucial for supporting technological advancements and responding to dynamic market conditions in these regions.

Although energy use is essential for growth, economic growth also spurs the need for more energy demand. Hence, this study aims to align with the goals of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, which includes ensuring access to modern and reliable energy. It also seeks to increase the resilience of human settlements and cities. It fills a lacuna in the literature to comparatively investigate the energy-growth dynamics in Ghana and Nigeria from two standpoints: (1) does the growth-led energy hypothesis hold, and (2) is the inverted U-shaped environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis? Using time-series data from 1980 to 2019, the ARDL-ECM and DOLS approaches demonstrate that (1) in the long run, a change in per capita GDP leads to a significant decrease (increase) in fossil energy use in Ghana (Nigeria). In other words, the asymmetric growth-led energy hypothesis holds in both countries; (2) the inverted U-shaped EKC does not hold for Ghana but for Nigeria; and (3) domestic credit exerts a positive demand for fossil energy in both countries. These outcomes show that, through proper implementation and legislation, both countries’ governments should address environmental concerns to accomplish the SDGs within the specified timeframe. Policy recommendations were mixed.

This paper analyses the factors that determine the process of digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To this end, digital transformation is conceptually approached as an innovation process in a company that affects its products and processes. The proposed theoretical framework integrates, from a holistic perspective, three dimensions in the digital transformation process in SMEs: (1) the technological dimension; (2) the human capital dimension; and (3) the organizational/relational dimension. Furthermore, these dimensions manifest themselves at three levels of analysis: (a) the entrepreneur/manager; (b) the firm; and (c) the environment external to the firm. The empirical research presented in this paper is based on a representative survey of SMEs in Spain. The results highlight that both internal skills and external sources of knowledge regarding information and communication technology (ICT) through consultants, suppliers, universities and technological centers constitute critical and complementary drivers for digital innovation in SMEs. The analysis also reveals the importance of an explicit digital transformation strategy in the company and the distribution of responsibilities regarding digitalization beyond the leadership of the entrepreneur/manager. Likewise, the complex use of the Internet by entrepreneurs/managers is observed to favor digital product innovation, whereas their growth ambition stimulates digital process innovation. The results also indicate that the relevance of the aforementioned determinants varies somewhat for microenterprises compared to other SMEs.

How the advancement of information and communications technologies (ICT) and digitalization affect labor productivity is subject of an ongoing debate. While parts of the literature find the expected positive effects, other studies have found no effect, resulting in the so-called productiviy paradox. As most of the studies have focused on economically advanced economies such as OECD countries, evidence for less developed economies has been sparse. We use a digitalization composite index from a balanced panel of 40 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies, using data from 2006 to 2021, to assess the effect of digitalization on aggregate labor productivity in SSA economies. We employ generalized least squares (GLS) and system generalized methods of moments (GMM) methods to capture the effects of digitalization on labor productivity levels in agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors. Our results show a weak association between digitalization and overall labor productivity. However, when sectors are analyzed separately, digitalization has a positive effect on labor productivity in agriculture and manufacturing sectors, whereas we find evidence for the productivity paradox in the service sector, with even a negative effect of digitalization on labor productivity.