Personality Traits, Entrepreneur’s Ambidexterity, and Knowledge
Brokerage: Evidence from Technology Firms
Ching Seng Yap
1
, Rizal Ahmad
2
, Nurul Afza Hashim
3
and Farah Waheeda Jalaludin
4
1
Faculty of Business, Curtin University, Malaysia, Miri, Malaysia
2
Graduate School of Business, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
3
Bank Rakyat School of Business and Entrepreneurship, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
4
Faculty of Accountancy and Management, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Sungai Long, Malaysia
Keywords: Personality Traits, Entrepreneur’s Ambidexterity, Knowledge Brokerage, Firm Performance, Knowledge
Sources, Technology Entrepreneurs, Malaysia.
Abstract: The study aims to identify the knowledge sources for opportunity recognition and to examine the
relationships between personality traits, ambidexterity, knowledge brokerage, and firm performance. Data
were collected from 132 entrepreneurs in the technology sector using a questionnaire survey. The study
finds that the mostly used knowledge sources for opportunity recognition are Internet/social media, online
media, and customers. The findings reveal that personality traits of entrepreneurs relates with ambidexterity,
specifically, openness to experience relates positively with engagement in exploration activities, and
conscientiousness relates positively with engagement in exploitation activities. Furthermore, entrepreneur’s
ambidexterity and knowledge brokerage have a positive relationship, which in turn, affect firm
performance.
1 INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurs are facing increasingly competitive
global environments which are characterized by
uncertainty, complexity and rapid technological
change. Drawing on the literature on managerial
ambidexterity, entrepreneurs divide their time and
resources to exploit existing knowledge to solve
short-term problems and explore new knowledge for
long-term opportunities. Entrepreneurs tend to
prioritize exploitation to exploration as the returns
from the latter are less certain and take longer time
to accomplish (March, 1991). Entrepreneurs who
could allocate balanced resources to exploration and
exploitation are considered to be ambidextrous
(O'Reilly and Tushman, 2004).
An ambidextrous entrepreneur tends to tap
various sources and gain knowledge in order to
exploit business opportunities and help solve
internal problems. In this connection, knowledge
brokerage is viewed as an essential practice to tackle
the problem. The literature refers to knowledge
broker as an intermediary (an individual or an
organization), who provides links, knowledge
sources and knowledge itself to an organization.
Knowledge brokers may consist of the employees
within the organization or professional knowledge
firms external to the organization (Hargadon, 1998).
Recent literature relates personality traits of
managers with their engagement in exploration and
exploitation activities as the latter represent learning
behavior (Keller and Weibler, 2014; Mom et al.,
2007). Keller and Weibler (2014) claimed that their
study is the first to empirically test the personal
characteristics and engagement in exploration and
exploitation activities, which provides important for
the conceptualization of ambidexterity at the
individual level.
The probable relationships among personality
traits, ambidexterity, knowledge brokerage and firm
performance motivate the conduct of this study.
Ambidexterity research has mainly been conducted
at the organizational, unit, and team levels (Gibson
and Birkinshaw, 2004; Keller and Weibler, 2014),
research at the individual level is still scarce
(Birkinshaw, and Gupta, 2013; Keller and Weibler,
2014; Lee and Lee, 2016). Moreover, knowledge
brokerage is prevalent in science, technology and
innovation fields (Verona, Prandelli, and Sawhney,
2006) as well as environment and sustainable
Yap C., Ahmad R., Hashim N. and Jalaludin F.
Personality Traits, Entrepreneurâ
˘
A
´
Zs Ambidexterity, and Knowledge Brokerage: Evidence from Technology Firms.
DOI: 10.5220/0006505000610069
In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (KMIS 2017), pages 61-69
ISBN: 978-989-758-273-8
Copyright
c
2017 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
development policy (Sheate and Partidário, 2010),
research on the role of knowledge brokerage in
entrepreneurial enterprises remains limited.
Therefore, the study attempts to examine the
relationships between personality traits and
entrepreneur’s ambidexterity, and between
entrepreneur’s ambidexterity, knowledge brokerage,
and firm performance. Besides, the study also
attempts to identify knowledge sources for
opportunity recognition among technology
entrepreneurs. Data were collected from 132
entrepreneurs in the technology sector in Malaysia
via a questionnaire survey. Quantitative technique
was adopted in this study as the survey instrument is
available in the literature and the number of
entrepreneurs in the technology sector is sufficient to
generate meaningful quantitative research findings.
Researchers and entrepreneurs are expected to
benefit from this study by gaining insights into
personality traits and its relationship with
ambidextrous entrepreneurs, and specific functions
of knowledge brokerage which lead to enhanced
firm performance.
The paper is structured as follows. The next
section reviews the literature of personality traits,
entrepreneur’s ambidexterity, and knowledge
brokerage and develops research hypotheses.
Research methods about data collection, sampling
procedures, and operationalization of variables are
then presented and that is followed by a report on
research findings. The last section concludes the
study by discussing research implications,
limitations and recommendations for future research.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Personality Traits
The Big Five personality traits – neuroticism,
extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness,
and conscientiousness have been dominant in
studying personality in organization and
management literature as they cover a broad scope
of human personality. Having the similar pattern of
learning behavior, openness to experience and
conscientiousness are aligned to the study of
exploration and exploitation of managers’ activities
(Colquitt and Simmering, 1998; Mom et al., 2007).
Openness to experience is concerned with
curiosity, creativity, intellect, and flexibility in terms
of attitudinal and behavioral. This personality trait is
associated with exploration activities which require
changing the status quo, searching for new ways,
and experimenting new approaches, and innovating.
Further, exploration activities need behavioral
flexibility to disassociate from existing work
practices and routines. On the other hand,
conscientiousness is related to goal-directed
behavior which requires predefined goals coupled
with existing knowledge and competencies, and
previous experience, in order to exploit for goal
attainment.
Therefore,
H
1
: Openness to experience relates positively
with entrepreneur’s engagement in exploration
activities.
H
2
: Conscientiousness relates positively with
entrepreneur’s engagement in exploitation activities.
2.2 Ambidexterity
The term ambidexterity was first cited in Duncan
(1976) to study dual structure in organizations.
Ambidexterity can be analyzed at the organizational,
unit or individual levels. This study views ambi-
dexterity at the individual level of entrepreneurs or
managers. An ambidextrous organization manages
business activities involving different time horizons
and managerial capabilities. On the other hand,
building on March’s (1991) organizational learning
framework, an ambidextrous entrepreneur or
manager is said to be able to seek a balance between
exploration and exploitation activities and thus
enable them to perform better than others who focus
on either type of activities.
Being one of the few studies that examined
ambidexterity from the individual perspective, Mom,
Van Den Bosch, and Volberda (2009) defined
managerial ambidexterity as “a manager’s
behavioural orientation toward combining
exploration- and exploitation-related activities
within a certain period of time. Exploration activities
involve identification of new market needs and
technological opportunities which require the
development of new knowledge. On the other hand,
exploitation activities are focusing on efficient
production of existing product-market positions
which entail the use of existing knowledge
(Tushman and O'Reilly, 1996).
Both exploration and exploitation activities are
competing for limited resources such as time,
money, and human capital, and require distinctive
sets of skills and capabilities. To be ambidextrous,
organizations trade off short-term productivity for
long-term innovation, as well as stability for
adaptability (Lewin, Long, and Carroll, 1999;
March, 1991). An ambidextrous entrepreneur is
expected to engage in knowledge brokerage
activities to improve both exploration and
exploitation activities in their entrepreneurial
endeavor. Knowledge brokers can be both internal
and external to the firm. In the technology sector, the
engagement with knowledge brokerage activities is
higher as it requires more advanced level of
technical knowledge and know-how, as well as
business acumen and competency to market the
products.
Therefore,
H
3
: The higher the level of entrepreneur’s
ambidexterity, the higher the level of knowledge
brokerage activities.
2.3 Knowledge Brokerage
Gould and Fernandez (1989) recognized five
different types of brokers based on their role in
facilitation of knowledge flows within and between
organizations. Brokerage relations involve three
actors. Two actors are the actual parties to the
transactions and the third actor is the intermediary or
broker. The first type of broker is called coordinator
who enhances interaction between members of the
group he belongs to. The second type is called
cosmopolitan or itinerant where the principals
belong to the same group while broker belongs to a
different group (an outsider). The third type of
broker is called gatekeeper who absorbs knowledge
from a group and passes it to the group he belongs
to. The fourth type is called representative who
diffuses the knowledge of the own group to another
group. The last type of broker is called liaison, an
outsider who enhances interaction between two
groups (Kirkels and Duysters, 2010).
On the other hand, knowledge brokerage can be
discussed in terms of the value created in the firm
(Burt, 2004). The first type of knowledge brokerage
is to make individuals at both sides of a structural
hole aware of interests and problems in another
group. The second type of knowledge brokerage is
to transfer best practices from one group to another.
The third type of knowledge brokerage involves
drawing analogies between groups which are seen to
be irrelevant to one another. The final type of
knowledge brokerage is concerned with synthesizing
new belief and behaviors from both groups.
Prior research in knowledge brokerage mainly
focused on science, technology and innovation fields
(Verona, Prandelli, and Sawhney, 2006) as well as
environment and sustainable development policy
(Sheate and Partidário, 2010), research on the role of
knowledge brokerage in entrepreneurial enterprises
remains limited.
Knowledge brokers play an important role to
transfer new and specific knowledge and best
practices to ambidextrous entrepreneurs who may
not possess such knowledge. With the new
knowledge acquired through knowledge brokerage
activities, entrepreneurs are able to improve the
business operations and opportunities exploitation
which lead to enhanced business performance. As
such, this study argues that the level of knowledge
brokerage practice increases with the level of firm
performance.
Therefore,
H
4
: The higher the level of knowledge brokerage
activities the higher the level of firm performance.
The conceptual framework is presented in
Figure 1.
Note. OP – Open to Experience; CS – Conscientiousness;
EA – Entrepreneur’s Ambidexterity; KB – Knowledge
Brokerage; FP – Firm Performance.
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework.
3 METHOD
This study is non-experimental, cross-sectional and
with individual entrepreneurs as the unit of analysis.
3.1 Data Collection Method
Primary data are collected using an interviewer-
administered questionnaire survey. Interviewers are
present when respondents are filling out the
questionnaire to answer any doubts they might have
about the survey questions.
3.2 Sample and Sampling Procedures
The population of the study consists of business
firms in the technology sector in Malaysia. The
sector is selected based on the basis that a high level
of specific knowledge is needed in research and
development of products and services. The sample
was selected from the business directories such as
Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. A total of
OP
CS
EA
KB FP
500 firms were randomly selected and 132 firms
participated and returned completed survey forms, a
response rate of 26.4%.
As presented in Table 1, more respondents were
not the owner (58%) than the owner (42%) of the
firm. More than half (56%) of the respondents have
a Bachelor’s degree (56%). About 60% of the
entrepreneurial firms have been established for more
than 5 years. The size of the firm is equally divided
into micro (33%), small (34%) and big (33%).
Slightly less than half (48%) of the firms have an
RandD department/unit.
Table 1: Sample Profile (n=132).
Demographic Variable Per cent
Owner Yes
No
42
58
Highest
Educational
Level
Secondary
Diploma / Advanced Diploma
Bachelor’s Degree /
Professional Certificate
Master’s Degree
Doctorate Degree
9
14
56
18
2
Firm Characteristics Per cent
Year Firm
Established
1 year and below
2 to 5 years
6 to 10 years
Above 10 years
2
38
19
41
No. of
Employees
Micro (1 to 4)
Small (5 to 69)
Big (70 and above)
33
34
33
RandD Unit Yes
No
48
52
3.3 Variables and Measurement
Personality Traits. Two personality traits –
openness to experience and conscientiousness are
chosen as they are closely linked to entrepreneur’s
ambidexterity (Keller and Weibler, 2014). Nine
items are used to measure conscientiousness and ten
items for openness to experience (John, Robins, and
Pervin, 1991). Sample item for conscientiousness is
“I am a reliable worker”, and for openness to
experience is “I have an active imagination”.
Entrepreneur’s Ambidexterity. Entrepreneur’s
ambidexterity is viewed as a personal attribute that
refers to the ability to pursue both exploration and
exploitation activities at the same time.
Ambidexterity is computed by multiplying the score
of both activities. The measures for exploration and
exploitation activities are adopted from Mom, Van
Den Bosch, and Volberda (2009) and consist of
seven items respectively. All items are measured
along the scales of 0: not used at all; 1: low, 2:
medium, and 3: high. Sample item for exploration
activities include “Evaluating diverse option with
respect to products/services, processes, or market”
and for exploitation activities include “Activities
which you carry out as if it were routine”.
Knowledge Brokerage. Knowledge brokerage
activities are measured in terms of its value created.
Four items adopted from Burt (2004) are used to
collect the frequency of knowledge brokerage
activities, measured along the scales of 1: not used at
all, 2: low, 3: medium and 4: high. Sample item
includes “Transferring of best practices from other
firms to my firm”.
Knowledge Sources. To capture the knowledge
sources, 25 items covering knowledge obtained from
five categories – government departments and
agencies, business organizations, social
organizations, print and online media, and personal
contact (Foss et al., 2013). Respondents are asked to
indicate the extent to which they used the knowledge
from each source over the last three years for
opportunities recognition, along the scale of 0: not
used at all, 1: low, 2: medium, and 3: high.
Firm Performance. Firm performance is defined as
the degree to which firms attain all the purposes they
are supposed to (Strasser et al., 1981). Respondents
are asked to indicate their level of agreement on
their firm performance relative to their major
competitors in the past three years in terms of
operating profit, revenue growth, ROA, and ROI
(Dess and Robinson, 1984), measured along the
scale of 1: among the worst, 2: bottom half, 3:
average, 4: top half, and 5: among the best.
4 RESULTS
4.1 Descriptive Analysis
As shown in Table 2, among all sources of
knowledge listed, Internet and social media was
used to the highest extent in recognizing new
business opportunities among the entrepreneurs,
followed by customers, and online media. The
medium usage includes personal friends,
suppliers/vendors, and print media. On the other
hand, social organizations such as sports/leisure
club, NGO/third sector, and religious community
were the least used knowledge sources in
recognizing new business opportunities.
On the other hand, all activities of knowledge
brokerage were practised at a moderate level among
the entrepreneurs, of which “creating awareness of
interests and problems of other firms in the
organization” received the highest score by the
entrepreneurs.
Table 2: Source of Knowledge (in per cent).
Source 0 1 2 3
1. Federal Government
31
29 27 13
2. State Government 33
36
24 7
3. Local Council
34
30 28 8
4. Media – Print 14 27
40
19
5. Media – Online 8 18 38
36
6. Internet/Social Media 6 8 36
50
7. Chamber of Commerce 31
31
24 14
8. Conference/Trade Fair/
Exhibition
14 14
35
27
9. Industry Association 25
30
27 18
10. Professional Association 27 29
30
14
11. Bank/Financial Inst.
38
21 25 16
12. Consulting Firm
38
27 25 10
13. NGO/Third Sector
49
23 23 5
14. University/College/
Research Institute
25
31
30 14
15. Social Community 27 32
32
9
16. Religious Community
48
28 20 4
17. Sports/Leisure Club
49
25 21 5
18. Family Member/Relative 16 24
33
27
19. Personal Friend 11 19
44
26
20. Internal Employee 14 25
35
26
21. Board Member 25 23
32
20
22. Business Partner/Alliance 19 20
34
27
23. Customer 4 23 30
43
24. Competitor 17
38
30 15
25. Supplier/Vendor 4 22
41
33
Note: 0 – Not used at all; 1 – Low; 2 – Medium; 3 – High.
The highest frequency within the source is bolded.
4.2 Hypothesis Testing
Partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) with
R (Sanchez, 2013) was used in data analysis and
hypothesis testing. PLS-PM is a multivariate
statistical technique that allows simultaneous
evaluation between multiple variables. PLS-PM
involved two stages of analysis – assessment of
measurement model and structural model. The
measurement model evaluates reliability and validity
of the items and constructs while the structural
model evalautes effect size, direction, and
significance of the hypothesized relationships. As
the sample size is considered small at this stage,
additional test was conducted to ensure the data
analysis is sufficient to minimize Type II error
(Statistical power of more than 80%). GPower 3.1
was used to compute a statistical power analysis.
This study chose to detect a population effect size
represented by f
2
=0.25, based upon the findings of
past research, and is also the moderate effect size
proposed by Cohen (1988). For controlling Type I
error, α is set at the 0.05 significance level, which is
the norm in social science research. For controlling
Type II error, the power of the test is set at 0.80, the
level recommended by (Cohen, 1988) and adopted
generally by researchers. Using G*Power 3.1.9.2 F
tests (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, and Buchner, 2007), the
required number of sample size is 95. As the sample
size for this study is 132 which exceeds the required
number, it can therefore be concluded that the study
has sufficient power to detect the required effect size
of 0.25.
4.3 Assessment of the Measurement
Model
As shown in Table 3, all constructs were deemed
reliable and valid. All scores exceeded the minimum
requirement of Cronbach’s alpha (0.78 – 0.94),
composite reliability (0.86 – 0.96), and average
variance extracted (AVE) (0.50 – 0.84) (Nunally,
1978). The discriminant validity of the items was
evaluated by comparing the squared roots of AVE
and correlation coefficients between constructs. All
the squared roots of AVE on the diagonal line are
higher than the correlation coefficients between
constructs, indicating discriminant validity at the
construct level. All items were loaded higher than
0.60 within the respective constructs – opennes to
experience (0.61 – 0.81), conscientiousness (0.76 –
0.81), knowledge brokerage (0.75 – 0.79), and firm
performance (0.88 – 0.93), and were loaded low
across other constructs, indicating adequate
convergent validity and discriminant validity at the
item level. As the requirements of reliability,
convergent validity, and discriminant validity at both
construct and item levels are met, the data analysis
proceeds to evaluate the structural model.
Table 3: Correlation Matrix.
Variable
M SD 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
1. OP 3.50 .46
.71
2. CS 3.72 .60 .55
.78
3. ER 4.63 .98 .43 .45
.78
4. EP 4.83 1.00 .29 .49 .65
.77
5. KB 1.78 .63 .23 .40 .37 .39
.77
6. FP 1.81 .74 .13 .28 .18 .11 .24
.92
Note. OP – Open to Experience; CS – Conscientiousness;
ER – Exploration; EP – Exploitation; KB – Knowledge
Brokerage; FP – Firm Performance.
4.4 Assessment of the Structural Model
The structural model as presented in Figure 2 shows
that both openness to experience and
conscientiousness are significantly related to
entrepreneur’s ambidexterity, supporting H
1
and H
2
respectively. However, the relationship between
openness to experience and entrepreneur’s
ambidexterity (β = .18, t = 2.02, p = .045) is
relatively weaker than the relationship between
conscientiousness and entrepreneur’s ambidexterity
(β = .37, t = 4.10, p < .001). Both openness to
experience and conscientiousness explain about a
quarter of the variance for entrepreneur’s
ambidexterity (R
2
= .25). It is also found that
entrepreneur’s ambidexterity is positively and
moderately related to knowledge brokerage (β = .38,
t = 4.61, p < .001), and knowledge brokerage is
positively related to firm performance (β = .24, t =
2.81, p = .006). Knowledge brokerage explains
merely 6% of the variance for firm performance.
Overall, the Goodness of Fit Index stands at 30.3%.
In sum, all the hypotheses tested are supported by
the data.
Note. *** p > .001; ** p > .01; * p > .05; GoF = .303; OP – Open
to Experience; CS – Conscientiousness; EA – Entrepreneur’s
Ambidexterity; KB – Knowledge Brokerage; FP – Firm
Performance.
Figure 2: Structural Model.
A second analysis was conducted to test the
relationship between personality traits and the two
dimensions of ambidexterity. The analysis found
support for the positive relationship between
openness to experience and exploration activities (β
= . 43, t = 5.44, p < .001), and between
conscientiousness and exploitation activities (β =
.49, t = 6.45, p < .001). The Goodness of Fit Index
stands at 31.8%.
4.5 Discussion
The study finds that openness to experience is
weakly but significantly related with exploration
activities of entrepreneurs. Similarly, conscientious-
ness also significantly related with exploitation
activities of entrepreneurs, but with a relatively
stronger effect. The findings confirm the importance
of fitting the personality traits and the dimension of
entrepreneur’s ambidexterity activities which are
consistent with Keller and Weibler (2014).
Furthermore, this study finds that entrepreneur’s
ambidexterity relates positively and moderately with
knowledge brokerage. Lastly, knowledge brokerage
relates positively with firm performance.
5 IMPLICATIONS AND
CONCLUSION
5.1 Implications for Research
Firstly, the study introduced the ambidexterity
concept in the context of individual level of
entrepreneurs, which is lacking in the literature.
Secondly, the study tested the antecedent of
personality traits to entrepreneur’s ambidexterity.
The significant findings of the study confirmed the
managerial ambidexterity literature in the context of
technology entrepreneurs in an emerging economy.
Thirdly, the study introduced knowledge brokerage
activities as the consequence of ambidexterity, and
antecedent to firm performance. The study
underscores the importance of knowledge brokerage
in enhancing business performance. Overall, the
study provides empirical evidence for the conceptual
framework.
5.2 Implications for Practice
Entrepreneurs should attempt to achieve
ambidexterity, which is to seek a balance between
exploration and exploitation activities in their
business operations. Entrepreneurs with personality
trait of openness to experience are more aligned to
exploration activities while with conscientiousness
are closely linked with exploitation activities. As it
is difficult to change these personality traits by
training, entrepreneurs themselves should be aware
of the importance of seeking a balance between the
two types of activities. While ambidexterity would
not directly lead to enhanced firm performance,
knowledge brokerage activities play an important
role to improve business performance. Entrepreneurs
should engage in knowledge brokerage practices to
acquire new knowledge to sustain in an ever
competitive business environment.
OP
.37***
CS
EA
.18*
.38***
KB
.24**
FP
5.3 Limitations and Recommendations
for Future Research
This study suffers from a number of limitations and
further research in this area is recommended.
Firstly, the sample size of this study is
considered small, which reduced its generalizability
to the larger population. Further, the study only
collected responses from technology firms where
knowledge brokerage activities are more prevalent.
Future researchers are recommended to conduct
similar studies on specific groups of technology
firms, such as start-ups or multi-national
corporations, and on other sectors where knowledge
brokerage activities are widely practised.
Secondly, common method bias may be present
as the responses of both independent and dependent
variables are obtained from the same source. Future
researchers may consider collecting data for firm
performance from other sources.
Thirdly, the study generally identified knowledge
sources where new business opportunities are
recognized. Future researchers may examine specific
knowledge sources in relation to specific business
opportunities.
Finally, the practice of knowledge brokerage
activities may not have a direct impact on firm
performance. As such future researchers may
investigate its indirect impact on firm performance
through product innovation.
6 CONCLUSION
The entrepreneur’s ambidexterity is difficult to
achieve as it requires an optimum balance between
two activities that are on the opposite sides.
Meanwhile, it is crucial to identify the antecedents
and consequences of managerial ambidexterity as
well as the potential moderators and mediators
affecting the relationship between managerial
ambidexterity and firm performance. This study
hopes to contribute to the managerial ambidexterity
literature by examining entrepreneur’s personality
traits as the antecedent to ambidexterity and
knowledge brokerage as the consequence. Besides,
entrepreneurs may benefit from this study by
recognizing the roles played by knowledge
brokerage activities in enhancing their business
performance.
Survey Items
Personality Traits
A. Conscientiousness
1. I do a thorough job
2. I can be somewhat careless (R)
3. I am a reliable worker
4. I tend to be disorganized (R)
5. I tend to be lazy (R)
6. I persevere until the task is finished
7. I do things efficiently
8. I make plans and follows through with them
9. I am easily distracted (R)
B. Openness to Experience
10. I am original, come up with new ideas
11. I am curious about many different things
12. I am indigenous, a deep thinker
13. I have an active imagination
14. I am inventive
15. I value artistic, aesthetic experience
16. I prefer work that is routine (R)
17. I like to reflect, play with ideas
18. I have few artistic interests (R)
19. I am sophisticated in art, music, or literature
Entrepreneur’s Ambidexterity
A. Exploration
1. Searching for new possibilities with respect to
products/services, processes, or markets
2. Evaluating diverse options with respect to
products/services, processes, or markets
3. Focusing on strong renewal of products/services
or processes
4. Activities of which the associated yields or costs
are currently unclear
5. Activities requiring quite some adaptability of
you
6. Activities requiring you to learn new skills or
knowledge
7. Activities that are not (yet) clearly existing
company policy
B. Exploitation
8. Activities of which a lot of experience has been
accumulated by yourself
9. Activities which you carry out as if it were
routine
10. Activities which serve existing (internal)
customers with existing services/products
11. Activities of which it is clear to you how to
conduct them
12. Activities primarily focused on achieving short-
term goals
13. Activities which you can properly conduct by
using your present knowledge
14. Activities which clearly fit into existing company
policy
Knowledge Brokerage
1. Creating awareness of interest and problem of
other firms
2. Transferring of best practices from other firms
3. Drawing analogies from other firms that may
seem to be invisible or irrelevant to your firm
4. Creating new beliefs and behaviors in your firm
Firm Performance
1. Operating Profit
2. Revenue Growth
3. ROI
4. ROA
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