Regina Lenart-Gansiniec

Background. The problems of open innovation and crowdsourcing are more and more often present in literature on management sciences. It is emphasized that during creation of innovation a given organisation should make use of the knowledge existing outside of it. Moreover, it is suggested that the process of creating and developing products or services should be open. By the same, organisations should make use of the knowledge that is being possessed by a generally understood public or crowd (Wexler, 2011). The crowd has gained a new meaning: from unorganised, chaotic and often aggressive people it has become organised and oriented towards problem solving, and in particular creating the so-called open innovations. However, despite the increase of researchers’ interest in the subject of open innovation or crowdsourcing and awareness of “crowd wisdom”, it is difficult to find in the literature unambiguous answers to the question on what is crowd capital. Many authors assume that crowd capital is the core of both open innovation and crowdsourcing.

Research aims. The aim of the article is integration and synthesis of the existing scientific output related to crowd capital and presenting an original conceptualisation of this notion.

Methodology. In order to identify the main research perspectives and develop a proposal of the conceptualisation, the method of systematic literature review was used, including an analysis of the number of citations. This enabled revealing the existing research axes and the cognitive structure emerging from works published so far. Publications entered in full text databases were analysed. The research covered a period of 9 years: from 2007 to 2016.

Key findings. The review and analysis of the contents of publications listed within the systematic literature review enabled identifying of the directions of further scientific research. The systematic foreign and domestic literature review published until 2016 indicated that many levels and areas of the occurrence of the subject phenomenon have still not been examined, which shows free space for new research in this scope. The article presents a proposal of an original conceptualisation of the notion of crowd capital.

Director of schools as manager in the process of building knowledge
The belief prevailed organizations „to change or perish”. At the forefront of the search for ways to differentiate the organization from the competition. One is the possession and use of a unique resource assets. The aim of this paper is to determine how to identify and acquire the new knowledge headmasters. It is a contribution to building knowledge at school, also depends on building a competitive advantage and fi nding new ways to survive in the environment.

Background. Absorptive capacity is defined as the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends. It is regarded as an important factor in both corporate innovation and general competitive advantage. Absorptive capacity explains how firms can create and capture value from in-sourcing external knowledge.
Research aims. The systematic literature review has indicated some discrepancies in the field of absorptive capacity operationalization of its dimensions.
Methods. The article summarizes both theoretical and empirical literature on absorptive capacity. Moreover, based on that literature some proposals for the operationalization of absorptive capacity were formulated.
Key findings. One of the interesting and quite new research areas within these processes is the absorptive capacity, and, to be more precise, the dimension of absorptive capacity. Generally speaking, absorptive capacity literature focused on the capacity to make use of existing knowledge, placing emphasis on the capacity to assimilate and transform it and the necessity for a firm to accept external knowledge as a legitimate resource for innovation. It is one of the fundamental learning abilities that organizations can develop to detect knowledge and information outside the organization that may be useful to them and then to internalize and adapt that information to their specific needs and exploit it for market goals. However, despite its positive impact on growth, quality and content of knowledge, the absorptive capacity has not been investigated in a holistic way so far. The article summarizes both theoretical and empirical literature on absorptive capacity. Moreover, based on that literature some proposals for the operationalization of absorptive capacity were formulated.

Strategic Orientation on Open Innovations of Local Government Units

It is more and more expected of public organisations that they will be open to their surroundings and innovative. This imposes on them the need for changes, which makes them reach more and more for solutions reserved so far only for commercial organisations. In the article an attempt was made to answer the following question: what is the level of strategic orientation on open innovations of local government units? In order to realise the goal set in this way literature studies and empirical research were conducted in purposefully chosen local government units. The results of the conducted research indicate a mediocre level of orientation.
 

Effective knowledge sharing conditions at a university

Purpose of the article is empirical verification of factors of efficient knowledge sharing by scientific workers of universities, existing in literature of the subjects, and an attempt to identify the most significant of them. The illustrative empirical data were obtained through a research tool in a form of a survey questionnaire, addressed to workers employed on scientific and didactic positions at universities located in Poland. The realized research allowed to specify previous knowledge related to premises of knowledge sharing, with regard to the knowledge workers. Results of the performed research suggest that these factors are mainly of a resourceful nature. The obtained results not only confirm but also complement the theoretical basis for knowledge sharing in the academic environment.