Introduction
Value creation has shifted from tangible factors, such as financial capital, land, and machinery, to intangible resources of production, such as knowledge (see Penrose, 1959; Barney, 1991; Kogut and Zander, 1992; Grant, 1996; Spender and Grant, 1996; Del Giudice and Maggioni, 2014). The debate surrounding KM has gained momentum during the past two decades, emerging as a significant avenue for management research. KM deals with the practices and processes that enable efficient and effective management of knowledge resources (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Garrido-Moreno et al., 2014; Chen and Fong, 2015).
Empirical, firm-level KM research has focused on two areas: One has examined how generic knowledge processes (e.g. knowledge sharing, acquisition and creation) are linked with firm performance outcomes (Darroch, 2005; Chen et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2013; Del Giudice and Maggioni, 2014; Garrido-Moreno et al., 2014; Ferraris et al., 2017). The other avenue has investigated the interconnection between KM practices and performance outcomes (Singh, 2008; Chen and Huang, 2009; Hsu et al., 2014; Inkinen et al., 2015; Ardito and Messeni Petruzzelli, 2017). In a fundamental divergence from knowledge processes, KM practices are purposeful organizational and managerial activities aimed at managing the organizational knowledge resources (Foss and Michailova, 2009; Foss and Minbaeva, 2009; Andreeva and Kianto, 2012; Kianto and Andreeva, 2014).
