Innovativeness determinants of network organisations in the knowledge economy

Abstract

This study consists of nine chapters. In the first chapter one presents considerations regarding conditions of development of network organisation in the knowledge economy. The second chapter shows opportunities and barriers of functioning of these organisations. The third chapter highlights the significance of features of a learning organisation for network organisations and of their innovativeness and it is an attempt to assess network organisations with accordance to that. The fourth chapter underlines the complexity of the phenomenon of knowledge management and the relations of network organisations with innovativeness. The fifth chapter concerns the effectiveness of network organisations and measures of their innovativeness in this context. Chapter six presents the determinants of network organisations’ innovativeness. The ways of implementing innovations, sources, types of implemented innovations and their benefits are presented in this chapter too. A.measure of innovative activity of network organisations was the number of implemented innovations. The analysis of the innovativeness’ conditions of franchise networks (Chapter 7), virtual organisations (Chapter 8) and clusters (Chapter 9) are presented in further chapters. Each chapter ends with a summary of research results. The results of empirical studies allowed to obtain answers to the formulated research questions. On this basis one can make conclusions about the relationship between innovativeness, network structures and knowledge economy.