Ego-network stability and exploratory innovation: the moderating role of knowledge networks

PurposePrevious studies examined the effect of inter-organizational collaboration relationships on organizational innovation. However, most focused on the configuration of the network from the static network perspective, and few examined the influence of network structure stability on an organization's exploratory innovation from the ego-network perspective. This study addresses this research gap by focusing on ego-network stability and its effect on an organization's exploratory innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical setting is the smartphone collaboration network from 2004 to 2017. We selected one-site schemes and panel data of patents from the Derwent Innovation Database. A negative binomial model with fixed effects was used to test our hypotheses.FindingsThe regression results show that an organization's ego-network stability has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with its exploratory innovation. Global cohesion of the focal organization's knowledge network moderates the process in such a way that when it is at a high level, an organization's exploratory innovation can benefit more from a moderate level of ego-network stability. However, local cohesion moderates in such a way that, at a low level, an organization's exploratory innovation can benefit more from a moderate level of ego-network stability.Originality/valueThis study highlights the importance of ego-network stability and its effect on the focal organization's exploratory innovation. It contributes to the literature on the relationship between ego-network stability and exploratory innovation by investigating the moderating role of global cohesion and local cohesion in knowledge networks.

METAPHORICAL CHAINS AND REFERENCE USAGE IN NEWSPAPERS: A MECHANISM FOR TEXTUAL COHESION

This article examines the phenomenon of metaphor in newspapers, focusing on the use of multiple metaphors of the same type used to form a coherent chain. These metaphoric chains are treated within the frame of Halliday’s Systemic Function Grammar (SFG) as a feature of textual cohesion. The different cohesion features recognised by SFG are briefly presented. Features including pronominal anaphora, ellipsis, and reference by definite noun phrases are, in different studies, believed to play the same role as generic ‘referencing’. On the other hand, as different words or expressions chosen within the same source domain, metaphoric chains are connected to the feature of lexical cohesion. They form a single network of links through the entire text, guaranteeing global cohesion. Many questions are left unanswered and thus the conclusions advocate for an extensive corpus-based study aimed at accounting for the relation of the two phenomena and the cultural motivations of the use of metaphors.

Memory, Mystery and Coherence: Does the Presence of 2‐3 Counterintuitive Concepts Predict Cultural Success of a Narrative?

This article reports an investigation involving a series of studies carried out to critically examine the hypothesis that presence of 2 or 3 minimally counterintuitive concepts in a story makes it more memorable than stories containing fewer or more of such concepts. The results paint a more complicated picture involving a number of interacting factors with contribution of the counterintuitive concepts to the global story cohesion emerging as a key mediating factor. It was found that addition of counterintuitive concepts only makes stories more memorable if those concepts contribute to the global cohesion of the overall story.

On the development of narrative structure in child L1 and adult L2 acquisition

ABSTRACTThe present study investigates the development of grammatical aspects of narrative structure in child L1 and adult L2 acquisition in a comparative perspective. The narratives were elicited through a picture story task. In the theoretical part of the study, this task is analyzed in semantic and psycholinguistic terms. In the empirical part of the study, it is demonstrated that narratives relating to an early phase of adult L2 acquisition show strong global cohesion, whereas narratives by child L1 learners tend to have very weak cohesion up to around 5 years of age. In a second developmental phase, however, the situation is observed to be the reverse: whereas child L1 learners become very much concerned with narrative structure and accomplish very strong cohesion, adult L2 learners tend to experience a dip in performance. The observed developmental asymmetry is interpreted as indicative of a difference in cognitive resources and sociocommunicative skills between the two types of learners.