Extending and Developing the Knowledge-based View: From firms to platform-based ecosystems
The Sabbatical Project aims at extending and developing the knowledge-based view of the firm by studying digital platform-based ecosystems. It is important as these ecosystems have rapidly become a critical source of economic activity in our market society and are reshaping the socio-economic structures.
The role of platform owners/providers has moved from one of resource control (executed in a traditional corporate hierarchy) to orchestration of the surrounding ecosystem, by establishing contractual relationships with a large number of surrounding firms. In this way, even peripheral ecosystem participants’ knowledge and experiences are channelled back to the platform provider, constituting a learning loop based on multiple trial-and-error. The centrally placed platform can use this combined data from participants and customers to identify emerging combinations of valuable products and services that can be exploited in a wider context. To understand exactly how and where valuable knowledge is created in these systems, I intend to synthesize and extend my earlier research on the knowledge-based view and international management, to contribute to our understanding of an important contemporary phenomenon by crafting high-impact publications.
The conceptual work and the empirical studies on platform ecosystems will be carried out in close cooperation with the highly accomplished faculty in the Innovation and Strategy Area at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand.
The role of platform owners/providers has moved from one of resource control (executed in a traditional corporate hierarchy) to orchestration of the surrounding ecosystem, by establishing contractual relationships with a large number of surrounding firms. In this way, even peripheral ecosystem participants’ knowledge and experiences are channelled back to the platform provider, constituting a learning loop based on multiple trial-and-error. The centrally placed platform can use this combined data from participants and customers to identify emerging combinations of valuable products and services that can be exploited in a wider context. To understand exactly how and where valuable knowledge is created in these systems, I intend to synthesize and extend my earlier research on the knowledge-based view and international management, to contribute to our understanding of an important contemporary phenomenon by crafting high-impact publications.
The conceptual work and the empirical studies on platform ecosystems will be carried out in close cooperation with the highly accomplished faculty in the Innovation and Strategy Area at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand.
Final report
SAB23-0082: Scientific Results
Introduction and Outreach
My research project has been greatly helped by the sabbatical visit to University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand, between February and October 2024, leading to a close cooperation with the highly accomplished faculty in the Innovation and Strategy and International Business Areas of the Business School. Research collaboration resulting in manuscript production has taken place with Senior Lecturer Sihong Wu and Dr. Peter Zamborsky, and especially valuable exchanges of ideas have occurred frequently with Professor Emeritus Roderic Brodie, Professor Snejina Michailova, Associate Professors Maureen Benson-Rea and Julia Fehrer. We have developed continuing research collaboration in the field of platform ecosystems and new business models informed by a knowledge-based view. In addition, the long-term cooperation between two business schools committed to researching and fostering sustainable business practices has been strengthened.
In addition to presenting my research at a well-attended seminar at the Business School, I have greatly benefitted from attending over 20 very inspiring seminars given both by Auckland and other New Zealand-based faculty, but also by scholars from Australia, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Sweden, and the USA on a multitude of interesting topics. I also held a workshop on publishing with the Auckland Ph.D. Candidates and supported (within my area of expertise) publication efforts in top journals in the so-called “Accelerator Program”. Two rewarding visits to Victoria University of Wellington were undertaken for discussions with representatives of the strategy group.
In terms of outreach to the local business community, I gave a presentation at the New Zealand-Scandinavia Business Association, and attended several of their meetings with great interest, discussing inter alia similarities and differences between small open economies as well as common (often geopolitical) challenges.
Project Results, Publications, and Research Collaboration
After having participated in developing the knowledge-based view, with a number of publications based on the empirical work in my dissertation (Zander, 1991), I have during my sabbatical studied new business models, for instance platform-based ecosystems, and those used by multinational companies (MNCs) in developing sustainability in twin transitions. A good empirical illustration of the latter is the Danish MNC Ørsted’s approach to designing, constructing and servicing large Wind-park Projects in an environment characterized by geopolitical tension and climate scepticism in North America. Changing MNC business models is a recent empirical phenomenon that generates new interesting research questions, where my interest in them is a direct result of my stay in Auckland (see the Wu, Zamborsky & Zander paper, where we use a large database to address the issue of organizing internationally for “Twin Transitions”). The manuscript will be submitted shortly to Organization Science, and the University of Auckland will ensure Open Access at publication.
Platform ecosystems and new MNC business models differ in nature, but a common denominator is the increased reliance on open network-based knowledge structures (cf. Granovetter, 1973) (as opposed to corporate hierarchies) and orchestration (as opposed to resource control). During my sabbatical I also finished authoring a paper on tensions in platform evolution (see Zander, Lu & Chimenti, 2025) published in Journal of Business Research (Open Access). In the article, we focus on how knowledge in platform ecosystems evolves while harbouring five salient tensions (labelled: “external and internal winner-takes-all monopolization”, “value creation and value capture”, “central control and peripheral dynamics”, “old-timers and newcomers”, and “geopolitical tensions – the global and the local”). The identification and analysis of these proposed tension-laden drivers is based on combining the growing literature on the platform ecosystems with an evolutionary perspective. We conclude that four of the identified tensions sustain ecosystem innovation by enhancing blind variation and selective retention processes, while the fifth – geopolitical tension – at least in the short run - acts as a “spanner in the works”.
A third paper on knowledge in platform ecosystems treats the role and importance of organizational language, alphabets, grammar, and communication for developing new knowledge, products, and services in ecosystem-like situations experienced by traditional MNCs (see Larsson Carlander & Zander) intended for submission shortly. Producing a good or service typically requires the application of many types of knowledge (Kogut and Zander, 1992). The vital role of codification and language in these processes “balancing on the edge of chaos” are discussed in depth, introducing the entropy concept and focusing on diverse types of managers as “Maxwellian Demons”, sorting and creating order in ecosystems.
In a related paper with Lena Zander, accepted to the 2024 Academy of Management meeting and abstract published in the AOM Proceedings, we explore the micro-level complications introduced by managers’ nationality and culture and develop an evolutionary approach to MNC development heavily influenced by management biases (see Zander & Zander). The manuscript is to be submitted to a prominent European journal shortly. In the sabbatical project is has been seen as important to leave the traditional macro-level of studying firms, and therefore this paper has a vital role in the publications emerging from the stay in Auckland.
As the use of teams in knowledge production is frequent in virtually all the new business models discussed, we therefore in the Yildiz, Murtic, and Zander 2024 paper (Open Access) attempt to better understand meso-level processes of knowledge creation and capture in teams (situated between the knowledge of the firm and the individual). For this purpose, we reconceptualize absorptive capacity, which is a key concept in both innovation studies, organizational learning, and the knowledge-based view of the firm.
The paper with Mårtensson, Fors, Fröberg, and Nilsson finally extends the reasoning around knowledge production to the system level, by invoking the concept of the “tragedy of the commons” (see Hardin, 1968) and applying it to long-term fundamental implications for future rigor and relevance in the university system. Focus is put on that the scholarly community and its craft are ”deeply rooted in engagement in the world, collegiality, and apprenticeship with seasoned experts, connecting community members to “the foundations of our knowledge and expertise.” (Bechky & Davis, 2025). As generative begin AI enables algorithms to do scholarly work: searching literature, collecting data, generating hypotheses, writing and reviewing articles, a challenge becomes that “(We)… now inhabit an ecology of science driven by algorithmic measurement, from individual articles to scholars, journals, and academic institutions” and that “in a system driven by quantitative metrics, the point is not to be read but to be published and cited” (ibid.). We identify multiple other challenges triggering underproduction of relevant knowledge but also note that it is no news that the tasks and expertise of knowledge workers change when innovative technologies are adopted (see e.g. Barley, 1986).
A logical ongoing next step is to synthesize the thinking behind these six papers and connect it even more closely with my earlier research. In my future research I will continue to work on integrating publications on the knowledge-based view and knowledge production in platform ecosystems as well as new and emerging business models (cf. Fehrer, Woratschek, & Brodie, 2018), possibly in the form of a book. In this kind of work a fundamental question becomes: how, when, where, and by whom valuable knowledge is created, shared and stored in diverse types of knowledge-creating systems? By conducting studies at the micro-, meso-, macro-, and system levels that confront the findings of the knowledge-based view of the firm with recent business model and governance developments, boundary conditions have become visible. I am convinced that important modifications to the knowledge-based view can be made at this point if we conduct comparative studies of different systems (cf. Alvarez, Zander, Barney & Afua, 2020). A central focal point in the research project is to understand, unravel, tease out, and specify organizing principles (Kogut & Zander, 1992) underlying digitally enabled platform-based ecosystems and new MNC business models. The sabbatical research project has examined the inner workings, not so much of firms or other free-standing organizations as in more complex network-like structures responsible for knowledge creation and capture in platform ecologies as well as in those characterizing new MNC business models.
The ambition for my continued work remains to make further contributions to both theory development and our empirical understanding. How can we, for instance, in detail use the central tenets of organizing principles and organizational learning when studying ecosystems and new business models, and how will comparative studies of different knowledge production systems in turn extend and develop today’s theoretical lenses used for studying the evolution of knowledge production? The sabbatical funding from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation has given me an excellent opportunity to pursue my research agenda, be exposed to new and exciting ideas and empirical material, establish new collaborations with scholars internationally, and generate six manuscripts (both conceptual papers and empirically based ones), whereof two have been published and the other four are to be submitted to journals in the near future. For all this support, I am incredibly grateful.
Publication List, SAB23-0082
Published articles:
Yildiz, H. E., Murtic, A., & Zander, U. (2024). Re-conceptualizing Absorptive Capacity: The importance of teams as a meso-level context. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 199, 123039. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.123039
Zander, U., Lu, L., & Chimenti, G. (2025). The Platform Economy and Futures of Market Societies: Salient tensions in ecosystem evolution. Journal of Business Research, 189, 115037. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.115037
Manuscripts to be submitted:
Larsson Carlander, M., & Zander, U. Knowledge Dynamics: Languages of Firms and Maxwellian Demons. Working Paper, Stockholm School of Economics. Target journal not yet decided.
Wu, S., Zamborsky, P. & Zander, U. The Twin Transitions and Greenfield FDI in Renewable Energy. To be submitted to Organization Science. Open Access through Auckland University.
Zander, L., & Zander, U. (2024). Multinational Enterprise Evolution: Culture Bias in Management Practice Selection and Retention. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2024, No. 1, p. 19597). Valhalla, NY 10595: Academy of Management. Abstract Published Online: 9 Jul 2024: https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2024.19597abstract To be submitted to Management International Review; Open Access through Uppsala University.
Zander U., Mårtensson, P., Fors, U., Fröberg, E., & Nilsson, G.H. (2025). The Tragedy of the Knowledge Commons – Scholarly work in transition. Working Paper, Stockholm School of Economics. Target journal not yet decided.
Other References
Alvarez, S. A., Zander, U., Barney, J. B., & Afuah, A. (2020). Developing a theory of the firm for the 21st century. Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 711-716.
Barley, S. R. (1986). Technology as an occasion for structuring: Evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments. Administrative science quarterly, 78-108.
Bechky, B. A., & Davis, G. F. (2025). Resisting the algorithmic management of science: Craft and community after generative AI. Administrative Science Quarterly, 70(1), 1-22.
Fehrer, J. A., Woratschek, H. & Brodie, R. J. (2018). A systemic logic for platform business models. Journal of Service Management, 29(4), 546-568.
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.
Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162: 1243-48.
Kogut, B., & Zander, U. (1992). Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology. Organization Science, 3(3), 383-397.
Introduction and Outreach
My research project has been greatly helped by the sabbatical visit to University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand, between February and October 2024, leading to a close cooperation with the highly accomplished faculty in the Innovation and Strategy and International Business Areas of the Business School. Research collaboration resulting in manuscript production has taken place with Senior Lecturer Sihong Wu and Dr. Peter Zamborsky, and especially valuable exchanges of ideas have occurred frequently with Professor Emeritus Roderic Brodie, Professor Snejina Michailova, Associate Professors Maureen Benson-Rea and Julia Fehrer. We have developed continuing research collaboration in the field of platform ecosystems and new business models informed by a knowledge-based view. In addition, the long-term cooperation between two business schools committed to researching and fostering sustainable business practices has been strengthened.
In addition to presenting my research at a well-attended seminar at the Business School, I have greatly benefitted from attending over 20 very inspiring seminars given both by Auckland and other New Zealand-based faculty, but also by scholars from Australia, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Sweden, and the USA on a multitude of interesting topics. I also held a workshop on publishing with the Auckland Ph.D. Candidates and supported (within my area of expertise) publication efforts in top journals in the so-called “Accelerator Program”. Two rewarding visits to Victoria University of Wellington were undertaken for discussions with representatives of the strategy group.
In terms of outreach to the local business community, I gave a presentation at the New Zealand-Scandinavia Business Association, and attended several of their meetings with great interest, discussing inter alia similarities and differences between small open economies as well as common (often geopolitical) challenges.
Project Results, Publications, and Research Collaboration
After having participated in developing the knowledge-based view, with a number of publications based on the empirical work in my dissertation (Zander, 1991), I have during my sabbatical studied new business models, for instance platform-based ecosystems, and those used by multinational companies (MNCs) in developing sustainability in twin transitions. A good empirical illustration of the latter is the Danish MNC Ørsted’s approach to designing, constructing and servicing large Wind-park Projects in an environment characterized by geopolitical tension and climate scepticism in North America. Changing MNC business models is a recent empirical phenomenon that generates new interesting research questions, where my interest in them is a direct result of my stay in Auckland (see the Wu, Zamborsky & Zander paper, where we use a large database to address the issue of organizing internationally for “Twin Transitions”). The manuscript will be submitted shortly to Organization Science, and the University of Auckland will ensure Open Access at publication.
Platform ecosystems and new MNC business models differ in nature, but a common denominator is the increased reliance on open network-based knowledge structures (cf. Granovetter, 1973) (as opposed to corporate hierarchies) and orchestration (as opposed to resource control). During my sabbatical I also finished authoring a paper on tensions in platform evolution (see Zander, Lu & Chimenti, 2025) published in Journal of Business Research (Open Access). In the article, we focus on how knowledge in platform ecosystems evolves while harbouring five salient tensions (labelled: “external and internal winner-takes-all monopolization”, “value creation and value capture”, “central control and peripheral dynamics”, “old-timers and newcomers”, and “geopolitical tensions – the global and the local”). The identification and analysis of these proposed tension-laden drivers is based on combining the growing literature on the platform ecosystems with an evolutionary perspective. We conclude that four of the identified tensions sustain ecosystem innovation by enhancing blind variation and selective retention processes, while the fifth – geopolitical tension – at least in the short run - acts as a “spanner in the works”.
A third paper on knowledge in platform ecosystems treats the role and importance of organizational language, alphabets, grammar, and communication for developing new knowledge, products, and services in ecosystem-like situations experienced by traditional MNCs (see Larsson Carlander & Zander) intended for submission shortly. Producing a good or service typically requires the application of many types of knowledge (Kogut and Zander, 1992). The vital role of codification and language in these processes “balancing on the edge of chaos” are discussed in depth, introducing the entropy concept and focusing on diverse types of managers as “Maxwellian Demons”, sorting and creating order in ecosystems.
In a related paper with Lena Zander, accepted to the 2024 Academy of Management meeting and abstract published in the AOM Proceedings, we explore the micro-level complications introduced by managers’ nationality and culture and develop an evolutionary approach to MNC development heavily influenced by management biases (see Zander & Zander). The manuscript is to be submitted to a prominent European journal shortly. In the sabbatical project is has been seen as important to leave the traditional macro-level of studying firms, and therefore this paper has a vital role in the publications emerging from the stay in Auckland.
As the use of teams in knowledge production is frequent in virtually all the new business models discussed, we therefore in the Yildiz, Murtic, and Zander 2024 paper (Open Access) attempt to better understand meso-level processes of knowledge creation and capture in teams (situated between the knowledge of the firm and the individual). For this purpose, we reconceptualize absorptive capacity, which is a key concept in both innovation studies, organizational learning, and the knowledge-based view of the firm.
The paper with Mårtensson, Fors, Fröberg, and Nilsson finally extends the reasoning around knowledge production to the system level, by invoking the concept of the “tragedy of the commons” (see Hardin, 1968) and applying it to long-term fundamental implications for future rigor and relevance in the university system. Focus is put on that the scholarly community and its craft are ”deeply rooted in engagement in the world, collegiality, and apprenticeship with seasoned experts, connecting community members to “the foundations of our knowledge and expertise.” (Bechky & Davis, 2025). As generative begin AI enables algorithms to do scholarly work: searching literature, collecting data, generating hypotheses, writing and reviewing articles, a challenge becomes that “(We)… now inhabit an ecology of science driven by algorithmic measurement, from individual articles to scholars, journals, and academic institutions” and that “in a system driven by quantitative metrics, the point is not to be read but to be published and cited” (ibid.). We identify multiple other challenges triggering underproduction of relevant knowledge but also note that it is no news that the tasks and expertise of knowledge workers change when innovative technologies are adopted (see e.g. Barley, 1986).
A logical ongoing next step is to synthesize the thinking behind these six papers and connect it even more closely with my earlier research. In my future research I will continue to work on integrating publications on the knowledge-based view and knowledge production in platform ecosystems as well as new and emerging business models (cf. Fehrer, Woratschek, & Brodie, 2018), possibly in the form of a book. In this kind of work a fundamental question becomes: how, when, where, and by whom valuable knowledge is created, shared and stored in diverse types of knowledge-creating systems? By conducting studies at the micro-, meso-, macro-, and system levels that confront the findings of the knowledge-based view of the firm with recent business model and governance developments, boundary conditions have become visible. I am convinced that important modifications to the knowledge-based view can be made at this point if we conduct comparative studies of different systems (cf. Alvarez, Zander, Barney & Afua, 2020). A central focal point in the research project is to understand, unravel, tease out, and specify organizing principles (Kogut & Zander, 1992) underlying digitally enabled platform-based ecosystems and new MNC business models. The sabbatical research project has examined the inner workings, not so much of firms or other free-standing organizations as in more complex network-like structures responsible for knowledge creation and capture in platform ecologies as well as in those characterizing new MNC business models.
The ambition for my continued work remains to make further contributions to both theory development and our empirical understanding. How can we, for instance, in detail use the central tenets of organizing principles and organizational learning when studying ecosystems and new business models, and how will comparative studies of different knowledge production systems in turn extend and develop today’s theoretical lenses used for studying the evolution of knowledge production? The sabbatical funding from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation has given me an excellent opportunity to pursue my research agenda, be exposed to new and exciting ideas and empirical material, establish new collaborations with scholars internationally, and generate six manuscripts (both conceptual papers and empirically based ones), whereof two have been published and the other four are to be submitted to journals in the near future. For all this support, I am incredibly grateful.
Publication List, SAB23-0082
Published articles:
Yildiz, H. E., Murtic, A., & Zander, U. (2024). Re-conceptualizing Absorptive Capacity: The importance of teams as a meso-level context. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 199, 123039. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.123039
Zander, U., Lu, L., & Chimenti, G. (2025). The Platform Economy and Futures of Market Societies: Salient tensions in ecosystem evolution. Journal of Business Research, 189, 115037. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.115037
Manuscripts to be submitted:
Larsson Carlander, M., & Zander, U. Knowledge Dynamics: Languages of Firms and Maxwellian Demons. Working Paper, Stockholm School of Economics. Target journal not yet decided.
Wu, S., Zamborsky, P. & Zander, U. The Twin Transitions and Greenfield FDI in Renewable Energy. To be submitted to Organization Science. Open Access through Auckland University.
Zander, L., & Zander, U. (2024). Multinational Enterprise Evolution: Culture Bias in Management Practice Selection and Retention. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2024, No. 1, p. 19597). Valhalla, NY 10595: Academy of Management. Abstract Published Online: 9 Jul 2024: https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2024.19597abstract To be submitted to Management International Review; Open Access through Uppsala University.
Zander U., Mårtensson, P., Fors, U., Fröberg, E., & Nilsson, G.H. (2025). The Tragedy of the Knowledge Commons – Scholarly work in transition. Working Paper, Stockholm School of Economics. Target journal not yet decided.
Other References
Alvarez, S. A., Zander, U., Barney, J. B., & Afuah, A. (2020). Developing a theory of the firm for the 21st century. Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 711-716.
Barley, S. R. (1986). Technology as an occasion for structuring: Evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments. Administrative science quarterly, 78-108.
Bechky, B. A., & Davis, G. F. (2025). Resisting the algorithmic management of science: Craft and community after generative AI. Administrative Science Quarterly, 70(1), 1-22.
Fehrer, J. A., Woratschek, H. & Brodie, R. J. (2018). A systemic logic for platform business models. Journal of Service Management, 29(4), 546-568.
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.
Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162: 1243-48.
Kogut, B., & Zander, U. (1992). Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology. Organization Science, 3(3), 383-397.