Resumo

Although knowledge dissemination is an effective tool for improving organizational performance in industrial clusters, management research still gives scant attention to the impacts of institutional structures and the role of action in knowledge dissemination. For example, knowledge management literature is often concerned with how knowledge can be codified and transformed into an organizational asset by converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. However, we still know little about how this process unfolds when governance mechanisms are induced and adopted in industrial clusters.

As we ask: how institutional work affects the conformation of disseminated knowledge and the institutionalization of management standards through the adoption of governance mechanisms in industrial clusters? This article aims at understanding how institutional work affects the conformation of disseminated knowledge and the institutionalization of governance standards in industrial clusters. Also, it analyzes how institutional, economic, and relational environments distinctively influence the cognitive aspects of institutionalized knowledge disseminated.

Institutional context: The regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutional pillars are the elements that support institutions and explain the relationship between organizations and their environments (Scott, 2008); Knowledge in organizations and institutional work: Actors work to create, maintain, and disrupt institutions. Dissemination in the field involves institutional work for inducing organizational actors to persuade firms to accept innovative governance standards, understand and apply them to their realities, and modify them to gain legitimacy (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006).

We interview 17 actors from public and private entities that are part of the governance of three industrial clusters. We gather 96 valid structured questionnaires: 38 from Arapongas, 30 from Imbituva, and 34 from Londrina. We use within and between analysis (WABA) to test our model within and between clusters and evaluate the internal consistency of the variables and perform the analysis between the clusters using one-way ANOVA tests. We test our hypotheses using the correlation t-test for independent samples. We use multiple linear regression to build the model of the variables of the study.

Our findings reveal that the institutional work of embedded actors can shape the dissemination of knowledge in industrial clusters. Our findings show not only the microfoundations of governance standards institutionalization but also corroborate the effects of current institutions on firms embedded in different organizational fields. Therefore, we advance knowledge about how the institutionalization of governance standards in industrial clusters occurs according to their peculiarities, similarities, and contexts.

Cognitive aspects of the internalization of knowledge suggest that its diffusion occurs in a multifaceted context in which the actors are embedded and that the success of knowledge diffusion is affected by institutional, economic, and relational environments. We show that knowledge dissemination is much more effective when social relationships are included in the model along with institutional work. Yet, although local specificities also influenced the implementation of these standards, accepted governance standards did not become equally institutionalized equally in all three clusters.

Beckert, J. (2010). Institutional isomorphism revisited: convergence and divergence in institutional change. Sociological Theory, 28, p. 150-166. Davenport, T. H. & Prusak, L. (2000). Working knowledge: how organizations manage what they know. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard Business Press. Scott, W. R. (2008). Institutions and organizations: ideas and interests. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage. Kostova, T. & Roth, K. (2002). Adoption of an organizational practice by subsidiaries of multinational corporations: Institutional and relational effects. Academy of Management Journal, 45, p. 215-233.