This conceptual paper traces the history of production from simple offerings, with the logic of a product structure to a virtual structure, then how components are outsourced in a supply chain. In Wintelism, individual functions, within a product architecture and specified interfaces, are outsourced. Focal firms view the value chain as an ecosystem to optimize value.

Destructive innovation restruct and destruct ecosystems that are outperformed by ecosystems providing new offerings. Fundamental destructive innovations disrupt the very way production is made, the mode of production, replacing it by another. This paper raises the question if we are close to such a fundamental disruption.

This is a conceptual paper about the most fundamental concept in the science of business administration, value. It traces its history, discusses the demarcation approach of the service dominant logic, arguing against it. We hold that customer co-creation is already presumed in the concept of use-value; the customer can realize the value-potential of a product or a service by satisfying experiences from the offering. Under certain circumstances relationships influence the value, often motivating temporal suspension of market relations. In other cases relationships do not give the potential for additional value and the exchange between seller and buyer continues to be a transaction.The micro-foundations of value are searched in the social psychology of these experiences and how they build the value.The paper suggests the need for radical re-focusing of business practices, by proposing a conceptual model based on the macro-foundations of value.

This conceptual paper discusses the phenomenon of differentiation made possible throughbranding or innovation or a combination of the two. Differentiation is eventually the driving forcefor the development of its own negation, commoditization. When customers have endured acommoditized market long enough the opportunities open up for creative destruction, this conceptof Schumpeter (1942), means that an entrepreneur invents a completely new way of satisfying thecustomers’ unsatisfied needs, making the industry that no longer bothered about their customers. Many researchers have tried to re/brand destructive innovation as their own, with concepts, suchas of ”transilience”, and “blue ocean strategy’, as opposed to ‘red ocean strategy’.

The paper focuses on innovation as a differentiation strategy and on temporary monopoly rent asa driver of innovation. Increased competition and shortening and life cycles makes capitalism morevolatile and the strategies to reduce the risks involved are discussed. These strategies lead to thereal-world implementation of the concentration of capital forecasted by Marx and feared by Schumpeter.

The paper identifies the need to continuously monitor the concentration of capital and to understand individual markets by studying the firm’s profit.

In his ground-breaking work Sources of Innovation, Eric von Hippel discussed from where in (and out of) the value-chain innovations came in different industries: the customer, the manufacturer, the supplier or the third-party innovator (universities, research laboratories, etc.).

The world has changed, and new phenomena have become apparent. This article is a conceptual paper that discusses these new phenomenaand presenting a tentative updated pheno-typology of the sources of innovation, adding six to von Hippel’s original four. To build these phenotypes it draws heavily on Kaulio (1998), Borrus & Zysman (1997) and Hart & Sangbae (2002). 

As principal take-away, the consequences for the knowledge production and transfer are discussed for each of the 10 phenotypes, in comparison to the in-house, non-open innovation, default phenotype.

This is a conceptual paper about the most fundamental concept in the science of business administration, value. It traces its history, discusses the demarcation approach of the service dominant logic, arguing against it. We hold that customer co-creation is already presumed in the concept of use-value; the customer can realize the value-potential of a product or a service by satisfying experiences from the offering. Under certain circumstances relationships influence the value, often motivating temporal suspension of market relations. In other cases, relationships do not give the potential for additional value and the exchange between seller and buyer continues to be a transaction.The micro-foundations of value are searched in the social psychology oof these experiences and how they build the value.The paper suggests the need for radical re-focusing of business practices.

The objective of this paper is to build a model of how tacit knowing is externalised and becomes reflected external knowledge. 

Knowledge Management (Nonaka, 1991, 1994; Nonaka, Toyama and Konno, 2000) is an important field in Business Administration. Based on the model provided by Nonaka and his colleagues, researchers and practitioners have fallen into the pipe dream that employees’ tacit knowledge can be coded and canned in computers (structural capital), eventually leading to the enterprise without humans. Earlier critics (Gourlay, 2002, 2006; Gourlay and Nurse, 2005, Grant, 2007; Author 1, 2016a, 2019) of the knowledge management paradigm have shown that it does not understand Polanyi’s concept tacit knowing and that it is much more complicated to “externalize” such knowing than presumed by KM. The understanding in extant management literature of this process has been very problematic. 

Building on concepts in philosophy, psychology, pedagogics, organizational science, and engineering, a model is built and exemplified. This paper develops a theoretical framework for how tacit knowing can be externalized, what is required for such an externalization, and discusses the problems in such externalization, limiting it.

This conceptual paper discusses the phenomenon of differentiation made possible through branding or innovation or a combination of the two. Differentiation is eventually the driving force for the development of its own negation, commoditization. When customers have endured a commoditized market long enough the opportunities open up for creative destruction, this concept of Schumpeter (1942), means that an entrepreneur invents a completely new way of satisfying the customers’ unsatisfied needs, making the industry that no longer bothered about their customers. Many researchers have tried to re/brand destructive innovation as their own, with concepts, such as of ”transilience”, and “blue ocean strategy’, as opposed to ‘red ocean strategy’.

The paper focuses on innovation as a differentiation strategy and on temporary monopoly rent as a driver of innovation. Increased competition and shortening and life cycles makes capitalism more volatile and the strategies to reduce the risks involved are discussed. These strategies lead to the real-world implementation of the concentration of capital forecasted by Marx and feared by Schumpeter.

The paper identifies the need to continuously monitor the concentration of capital and to understand individual markets by studying the firm’s profit.

This conceptual paper explores the phenomena of changing cost-structures and the implications for the volatility of capitalism and the possibility to manage firms in such a hostile environment and proposes future research. It also provides an explanation of why the relevance of accounting is lost, the so-called “relevance lost” debate (see among others Francis

& Schipper, 1999).The changing cost-structures raises fundamental questions concerning the resulting the volatility of capitalism and the management of firms in such an increasingly more volatile environment. In Philipson, Johansson & Scheley (2016), we raised the question if it was possible to “...to ride the dragon.” Considering the importance of these phenomena, it is astonishing that we have not found any empirical research concerning them. They restresearch questions, based on the author’s almost 25 years of experience, as a senior executive in Scandinavian industry.

This is a conceptual paper giving a fundamental critique of knowledge management, as conceptualised by Nonaka and colleagues by a critical reading of Polanyi, inspired by the Russian psychologist Vygotsky and the US engineering professor Ferguson. The findings are that the externalisation of tacit knowing is much more complex and less prone to be managed than suggested in extant literature. In creating knowledge from such tacit knowing the community pf practice is identified as crucial.

This paper discusses the similarities and differences between peer-reviewed scientific articles and students’ theses (bachelor, one-year master, and two-year master). A sample of theses and scientific articles is analyzed as a basis for a discussion of what is a good thesis.

It holds that the Goals are different and that those goals should affect the principal process to be documented, the Research Process or the Presentation of the research results. It also proposes that the Structure of a thesis should to some degree be different from the scientific article. Finally, it proposes a Framework for a good thesis.