Investigating Managers' Exploration and Exploitation Activities: The Influence of Top-down, Bottom-up, and Horizontal Knowledge Inflows

Tom Mom, Frans Van Den Bosch and Henk Volberda

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: This paper develops and tests hypotheses on the influence of a manager’s knowledge inflows on this manager’s exploration and exploitation activities. Based on a survey among managers of a leading electronics firm, the findings indicate, as expected, that top-down knowledge inflows of a manager positively relate to the extent to which this manager conducts exploitation activities, while they do not relate to a manager’s exploration activities. Furthermore, as expected, bottom-up and horizontal knowledge inflows of a manager positively relate to this manager’s exploration activities, while they do not relate to a manager’s exploitation activities. We contribute to current literature on exploration and exploitation by focusing on the manager level of analysis, and by adding the importance of knowledge flow configurations to the literature on the impact of organizational factors upon exploration and exploitation.

Keywords: Bottom-up; Exploitation; Exploration; Horizontal; Knowledge inflows; Manager-level; Top-down (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 L20 M M19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: Investigating Managers' Exploration and Exploitation Activities: The Influence of Top‐Down, Bottom‐Up, and Horizontal Knowledge Inflows* (2007)
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