شرکت های بازاریابی صنعتی و انتقال دانش: به سوی یک نوع شناسی اساسی از ساختارهای جامعه

Industrial firm boundaries are dynamic, changing with every new alliance or acquisition. As boundaries evolve, managers must develop organizational structures that effectively leverage knowledge. This paper presents and explains the analytical foundation of a typology of community structures, featuring the basic structures of Crew, Séance, and Guru. This typology is applied to three examples of knowledge transfer in industrial marketing. A competence exploitation example examines knowledge transfer between a firm and a subsidiary established primarily for increasing existing product sales in a new market. A competence creation example examines the community structures for utilizing the product and market knowledge of a subsidiary to benefit the firm's new product development decisions. The final example examines the “tech vs. touch” tradeoffs in interpersonal communication and knowledge transfer. The back-to-basics typology of community structures helps stimulate strategic thinking, and facilitates future explorations of knowledge management in industrial marketing.

The boundaries of industrial firms are dynamic, changing with every new partnership, outsourcing alliance, research partnership, acquisition and divestiture. As firms evolve and disperse geographically, managers need to develop organizational structures that leverage knowledge more effectively. In a globally competitive environment, knowledge management is fundamental to firm survival and growth (Grant, 1996). Industrial firms are evolving into a network of networks (Ghoshal and Bartlett, 1990 and Ritter et al., 2004). Firms add new networks and structures with a range of objectives. The objectives or mandates of business units and subsidiaries evolve over time. Communication across business unit, subsidiary, and geographic boundaries of the firm has become simpler in some ways, and more complex in others, as expectations rise and choices expand (Ganesan, Malter, & Rindfleisch, 2005). The choices reflect contradictions and trade-offs. Air travel is faster, but security, cost, and carbon footprint concerns are troublesome. The greater interconnectivity through electronic media has increased the ability of individuals to interact freely, easily, and at a very low cost, but many people feel overloaded by the daily volume of email, instant messages, and text messages. The quick rise of Facebook and MySpace for entertainment and online networking in a personal context stands in direct contrast to the 1990s hype and crash of the business-to-business online communities such as Vertical Net (Kalakota & Robison, 1999). The Internet has changed the way people and organizations communicate and work, bringing along new benefits and new problems. As industrial firms develop strategies to build stronger networks for knowledge creation and knowledge transfer, questions remain on the roles of face-to-face interactions and online interactions for knowledge management. Online and traditional communities play an important role in knowledge management. In the consumer environment, Shaikh, Rangaswamy, and Balakrishnan (2007) examine community structure in their study of the diffusion of innovation through small internet networks on Facebook. While they look at structure, the focus is on the innovation diffusion aspects and the role of opinion leaders in that diffusion process. In the business-to-business (B2B) literature, there have been extensive analyses of complex networks, especially in the context of buyer–supplier relations and supplier alliances (Ritter et al., 2004, Möller and Halinen, 1999 and Möller and Rajala, 2007). Yet, there is little prior examination of the underlying structural prototypes of communities in either B2C or B2B contexts. In the complex B2B environment, it is important to examine what can be gained from first looking at the basic structures of community. Identification of a typology of community structures can then facilitate future explorations of knowledge generation, knowledge transfer and the diffusion of innovation. As communities rapidly form, expand and evolve, a back-to-the-basics approach can provide clarifying benchmarks and insights for industrial managers concerned about knowledge management. Structures and flows have been formally analyzed from multiple perspectives, initially in the sciences and engineering, with path-breaking work on group structures by Harary (1959) and Hare (1967). Issues of structure and process have philosophical roots that transcend all structures from the universe to the atom (see, e.g., Whitehead, 1979, Prigogine and Stengers, 1984, Gell-Mann, 1994 and Kauffman, 1993), with more recent work examining issues related to the creation of computer networks (Tanenbaum, 2002). In the social sciences there has been considerable research in psychology and sociology (e.g., Wasserman & Faust, 1994). In the management literature, the emphasis has been on the organizational structures of firms, and the benefits or limitations of different structures in different environments (6, Goodwin, Peck, & Freeman, 2006). However, studies in management typically describe particular situations, and do not address structure at the basic or generic level. Identification of the basic structures allows structural changes to be examined as simple rearrangements in structural type. The purpose of this paper is to present a basic typology of community structures, explain the analytical foundation of community structures, and show how these structures can affect knowledge transfer in industrial marketing.

Managers of industrial firms often recognize the strategic potential of knowledge management, but implementing effective knowledge management practices remains a daunting challenge. To reduce the myriad of knowledge management relationships to a manageable level conducive for in-depth strategic thinking, we introduced the typology of Crew, Séance and Guru. In a complex world, this back-to-basics approach highlighted the importance of identifying the elements, the relationships, and the directional flow of knowledge. The strategic dynamics of the situations can be illustrated by using directed graphs and flow diagrams, as well as the language of mathematics. Three applications of the typology to the industrial marketplace illustrated some of the choices involved in knowledge management within diversified industrial firms. The applications brought to life the common problem of an industrial marketer with multiple subsidiaries who is rethinking its knowledge management strategy. Although each case has its unique aspects, many commonalities can be found, as firms seek to better leverage their product and market knowledge across the headquarters, existing subsidiaries, and new subsidiaries and partners. In the first example, the firm has a competence exploiting objective, with the emphasis on the flow of knowledge from the headquarters to the subsidiary. In contrast, the second example of a competence creating objective focuses on the flow of knowledge from the subsidiary to the headquarters. At first glance, the directed graphs illustrating these examples look the same. It is only by systematically examining the elements, relationships and flows of community structure that the complex realities can better be grasped and understood. A third example explored the influence of the type of relationship connection, in terms of the degree of reliance on information technology and face-to-face contacts. Firms today wrestle with challenging choices regarding “tech vs. touch” tradeoffs in the workplace. Short term costs must be considered along with the potential long term benefits. Simply because a connection is in place, it does not follow that the connection will be fully utilized. Also, establishing high levels of channel redundancy can be inefficient and overly complex. Firms need to weigh multiple considerations as they invest in building connections between geographically dispersed individuals and business units. Foreign subsidiaries exist and thrive by operating in two networks, the internal network of the firm and their external network of suppliers and customers (Andersson et al., 2002). For effective new product development firms must learn to manage the knowledge flows across the networks and across geographic boundaries (Ganesan et al., 2005). In the increasing complexity of firm structure and alliances, the first step is to examine the basic community structures in place, by identifying the key elements, relationships and knowledge flow. Recognition of the basic Crew, Séance and Guru types can reduce the system to a level that can be described and analyzed. By presenting and explaining the analytical foundation of a typology of community structures, this paper contributes to the understanding of knowledge management in industrial marketing. The basic typology and the three applications enable higher strategic thinking about knowledge flow across firm boundaries.