COUPLED OPEN INNOVATION AND PERFORMANCE IN SMES: THE ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE CAPABILITIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL DYNAMISM

This research proposes to shed light on the antecedents and outcomes of coupled open innovation in the specific context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on the open innovation paradigm, knowledge-based view (KBV), and contingency theory, the paper constructs and tests a research model that investigates the effect of coupled open innovation on firm performance; the impact of knowledge management capability, knowledge appropriation capability, and environmental dynamism on coupled open innovation; and also the mediating role of collaborative open innovation practices. Using a sample of 228 SMEs operating in the Tunisian manufacturing industry, our results based on structural equation modeling (SEM) demonstrate that coupled open innovation positively and significantly influences firm performance. Furthermore, our findings confirm the crucial impact of knowledge management capacity and knowledge appropriation capacity in the implementation of coupled open innovation approach. The role of environmental dynamism in the adoption of collaborative practices is also proven in the SME context. Moreover, the results of our study add to the existing literature by empirically demonstrating the potential mediating role of coupled open innovation in the relationships that link knowledge management capacity, knowledge appropriation capacity, and environmental dynamism with SME performance, respectively. In this sense, this paper goes even further in the research on open innovation, as one of the first to fill an interesting gap regarding the antecedents of coupled open innovation and its implication on performance in the specific context of SMEs. In doing so, our research, through its results, provides interesting suggestions for SME managers who implement or intend to implement coupled open innovation to improve the performance of their company.

Análise de uma Abordagem Didática Sobre o Papilomavírus Humano (HPV) em um Livro Didático de Ciências da Natureza

ResumoO presente artigo tem como objetivo realizar uma discussão sobre a alfabetização e o letramento científico utilizando os pressupostos de Antoni Zabala em relação à prática educativa na disciplina de Ciências. A pesquisa apresentada é de caráter documental e examina um material aprovado pelo Programa Nacional do Livro e do Material Didático, selecionado pelos professores de uma escola da rede pública estadual para o Ensino Fundamental final, no município de Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul. A análise ocorre a partir da identificação de uma proposta didática apresentada no livro do sétimo ano de Ciências da Natureza, que segue as diretrizes da Base Nacional Comum Curricular que se trata da vacinação contra papilomavírus humano no processo de construção dos conhecimentos conceituais, procedimentais e atitudinais, no âmbito da prevenção e valorização da vida, da saúde e da produção e informação científica. Essa investigação foi realizada durante a disciplina de Linguagens e Alfabetização Científica do Programa de Mestrado em Ensino de Ciências e Matemática. Os resultados evidenciaram que a proposta didática de pesquisa possibilita a construção de conceitos, procedimentos e atitudes, propondo ações de resoluções de problemas na dimensão conceitual, no que se refere à apropriação de conhecimentos científicos, permitindo questionamentos sobre a saúde e atitudes de prevenção no campo atitudinal. Palavras-chave: Conhecimento Científico. Saúde Pública. Alfabetização. AbstractThis paper aims to conduct a discussion on literacy and scientific literacy using the assumptions of Zabala (1998) concerning the educational practice in science discipline. This research is documental and examines a material approved by the Brazilian Textbook Program, selected by the teachers of a public school for the final elementary school, in the municipality of Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul state. The analysis is based on the identification of a didactic proposal presented in a Natural Sciences book for the seventh-grade, that follows the National Common Curricular Base guidelines. It approaches the human papillomavirus vaccination and the process of building conceptual, procedural and attitudinal knowledge on the context of prevention and valuation of life, health and safety. This research was carried out during the Languages and Scientific Literacy discipline of the Master's Program in Science and Mathematics Teaching. The results showed that the didactic research proposal allows the construction of concepts, procedures and attitudes, offering problem solving actions, in the conceptual dimension, regarding the scientific knowledge appropriation, also allowing questions about health and prevention attitudes in the attitudinal field. Keywords: Scientific Knowledge, Public Health, Literacy.

Negotiating the Data Deluge on YouTube: Practices of Knowledge Appropriation and Articulated Ambiguity Around Visual Scenarios of Sea-Level Rise Futures

The present study aims at evaluating how YouTube users understand, negotiate and appropriate science-related knowledge on YouTube. It is informed by the qualitative analysis of post-video discussions around visual scenarios of sea-level rise (SLR) triggered by climate change. On the one hand, the SLR maps have an exemplary status as contemporary visualizations of climate change risks, beyond traditional image categories such as scientific or popular imagery. YouTube, on the other hand, is a convenient media environment to investigate the situated appropriation of such visual knowledge, considering its increasing relevance as a navigational platform to provide, search, consume and debate science-related information. The paper draws on media practice theory and operationalizes digital methods and qualitative coding informed by Grounded Theory. It characterizes a number of communicative practices of articulated knowledge appropriation regarding climate knowledge. This includes “locating impacts,” “demanding representation,” “envisioning further,” “debating future action,” “relativizing the information,” “challenging the reality of anthropogenic climate change,” “embedding popular narratives,” “attributing to politics,” and “insulting others.” The article then discusses broader questions posed by the comments and related to the appropriation and discursive negotiation of knowledge within online video-sharing platforms. Ambiguity is identified as a major feature within the practice of science-related information retrieval and knowledge appropriation on YouTube. This consideration then serves as an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between information credibility and knowledge appropriation in the age of the digital. Findings suggest that ambiguity of information can have a positive impact on problem definition, future imagination and the discursive negotiation of climate change.

Knowledge Management and Its Interrelations With Organizational Memory

In increasingly complex environments, knowledge appropriation, generation, management, use, and reuse constitute a systemic and complex process of transformation and added value for the formation of organizational memory. This study highlights the importance of processes and tools interrelated to knowledge management to enhance organizational memory actions, whose focus is on the repertoire memory, which, in turn, is based on different cognitions, collective acts and social relations. The research is qualitative, typologically descriptive, and exploratory, and constitutes a theoretical essay based on the literature published on the theme. This study is expected to contribute and enrich the theoretical framework of the scientific field of information science, more specifically concerning the interrelations of knowledge management with organizational memory, collectively constructed and linked to issues of efficiency and effectiveness, as well as evidence the relevance of the repertoire memory composed of previous knowledge and know-how for the constitution of memory organization.

Combining the Knowledge Appropriation Model and epistemic networks to understand co-creation and adoption of learning designs using log data

Social practices are well-known mediators in the adoption of educational innovations during professional learning, as postulated by the Knowledge Appropriation Model (KAM). However, understanding how teachers adopt new pedagogical approaches at scale is often difficult due to the lack of evidence available about their daily practices. In that sense, log data from online authoring and learning tools offer the possibility of better understanding the creation process of a learning design that reifies an educational innovation. This paper explores how statistical models and Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) can help us understand large-scale patterns in the co-creation and adoption of educational innovations, using KAM as a theoretical framework to analyse log data. More concretely, this paper presents a case study on Go-Lab, an initiative to promote inquiry-based learning at school. Its authoring and learning tool -Graasp- gives us a unique opportunity to track, not only the (co)creation of learning designs, but also their potential implementation in the classroom. The case study uses the aforementioned methodological approach to analyse the role of large-scale support initiatives in the co-creation and adoption of learning designs.

Social practices in teacher knowledge creation and innovation adoption: a large-scale study in an online instructional design community for inquiry learning

Social practices are assumed to play an important role in the evolution of new teaching and learning methods. Teachers internalize knowledge developed in their communities through interactions with peers and experts while solving problems or co-creating materials. However, these social practices and their influence on teachers’ adoption of new pedagogical practices are notoriously hard to study, given their implicit and informal nature. In this paper, we apply the Knowledge Appropriation Model (KAM) to trace how different social practices relate to the implementation of pedagogical innovations in the classroom, through the analysis of more than 40,000 learning designs created within Graasp, an online authoring tool to support inquiry-based learning, used by more than 35,000 teachers. Our results show how different practices of knowledge appropriation, maturation and scaffolding seem to be related, to a varying degree, to teachers’ increased classroom implementation of learning designs. Our study also provides insights into how we can use traces from digital co-creation platforms to better understand the social dimension of professional learning, knowledge creation and the adoption of new practices.

How cognitive links and decision-making capacity shape sectoral experts’ recognition of climate knowledge for adaptation

Scientific climate knowledge is often argued to be a key ingredient in climate adaptation. Focusing on individual sectors and institutions, researchers have given insights as to how climate knowledge is reframed according to institutional cultures and priorities. This study extends such scholarship by comparing how four sectors—greenspace management, building technology, spatial planning, and health—perceive, judge, transfer, and appropriate knowledge on urban heatwaves, and what adaptation options are proposed. Based on semi-structured interviews, documentary materials and observations of two workshops collected in two Swiss cities, I draw on Eviatar Zerubavel and his ‘cultural cognitive sociology’ whose work emphasises how collectively shared patterns of recognition and thinking guide and facilitate human judgement. I find two factors to influence knowledge appropriation. On the one hand, the formative dimension of knowledge underscores that experts understand climate knowledge similarly when a sector shares key concepts with climate science. If such ‘cognitive links’ are missing, the answers on how heatwaves impact experts’ work are more varied. On the other hand, the performative dimension of knowledge highlights that experts’ eagerness to adapt is influenced by diverging technical, legal, and social possibilities. When experts’ decision scope is large, then uptake of climate knowledge is more fluid. With a more explicit understanding of why sectors differ in their appropriation and integration of climate knowledge into their work, this study is a reminder that only fitting knowledge is of value to sectoral experts.

Remember rhythm and rime: Memory and narratives in science communication

Narratives include several characteristics that make them memorable, understandable and enjoyable. To study how memorable different ways are of presenting information is a fundamental task for science communication in order to evaluate materials that not only need to be understood by the general public, but also retained in the long-term as a part of the knowledge appropriation process. In this work I discussed that narratives can be seen as mnemonic structures that superimpose an artificial, logical structure on data which is not necessarily related. In this way scientific factual information can be communicated by being embedded in a mnemonic structure (the story) which facilitates future recollection. Narratives can also be seen as secondary modelling systems in which information is represented and organised by means of a plot. This enables us to make sense of reality and prepare information in an organised structure ready for future recall. Narratives offer information that is contextualised in real-life situations (episodes). When an episode in a narrative work evokes emotion in the reader, this incident may become memorable. Narratives also enable higher memory spans because the information included in them is grouped and organised in a semantic mode. Organisation and semantic links are, in turn, important factors for paired recall association, which represents an important aid in retrieving information from memory by association. Story schemas consist of abstract, content-free knowledge about the structure of a typical story. For science communication, one of the advantages of story schemas is that the lay public is already familiar with them; they represent a widespread and well-established knowledge that can be used, without previous instruction. The use of story schemas could enhance the communication process by facilitating several different stages in memory process. In this work I suggests that narratives represent an interesting tool for science communication to convey science not only in an attractive and reliable format, but also in a long lasting way.