دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی سرمایه فکری، شیوه های مدیریت دانش و عملکرد شرکت - امرالد 2017

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the association of different configurations of intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management practices (KMP) with firm performance. Do firms with different profiles concerning their overall levels of IC and KMP differ in terms of innovation and market performance? Design/methodology/approach – First, the firms were distributed into four distinct profiles based on their overall level of IC and utilization of KMP. Then, the four different IC/KMP profiles were evaluated with regard to their innovation and market performance. Findings – Consistent with the extant research, this study finds that the firms characterized with high levels of IC and high use of KMP are likely to outperform the firms with low overall levels of IC and KMP. On more interesting note, this study also demonstrates that firms characterized with high level of IC but only low utilization of KMP can match the innovation performance of the firms with high levels of IC and KMP. Practical implications – While the results indicate that the level of IC alone could predict the innovation potential of the firm, the firms should use KMP to leverage the IC and to capitalize the knowledge potential. This result shows the merits of letting innovation flourish without strict managerial control, while pinpointing the relevance of knowledge management (KM) in exploitation of IC. Originality/value – As one of the first attempts to merge the IC and KM approaches to find out which configurations could influence firm performance outcomes, this study provides the research community with valuable insights and sets the tone for further discussion.

Conclusion

Categorizing companies into four groups with high/low IC and KMP profiles exposed statistically significant group differences in terms of their innovation and market performance. The comparison of the four profiles demonstrated that knowledge-based issues show up on a company’s bottom line, as the firms strong both in overall IC and KMP outperformed the firms with low overall IC and low KMP, on both market and innovation performance measures. Peculiarly, companies with a high level of IC but low usage of KMP were found to be as innovative as those companies with high overall IC and KMP.

This paper is among the first attempts to merge the IC and KM approaches to find out which configurations could yield organizational benefits in terms of innovation and market performance outcomes. While it represents one of the first incremental steps toward constructing a comprehensive understanding of knowledge-based firm performance and value creation, it is laden with limitations. For example, this paper utilized rather rough average measure scores for constructing the IC/KMP profiles for the firms. In future studies, a more fine-grained assessment of different configurations of specific elements of IC and KMP should be built. That approach could bring about valuable managerial implications for which exact IC and KMP elements should the firms aim to combine to create competitive advantage. Second, to enable contrasting of the profiles, the IC, and KMP constructs were aggregated in a simple, explorative manner (i.e. as dichotomous high/low variable pairs). This approach left unaddressed the nature of the IC/KMP pairing, which might be described in terms of mediation or moderation types of relationships (see Kianto et al., 2014).