سرمایه فکری، شیوه های مدیریت دانش و عملکرد شرکت Intellectual capital, knowledge management practices and firm performance

Introduction Academics, practitioners, and policy makers broadly agree that knowledge is a crucial driver for firm performance and value creation (e.g. OECD, 1996; Grant, 1996; Makadok, 2001; Hamilton, 2006; Ferreira and Hamilton, 2010). The prominent academic discussion addressing the impact of knowledge-based issues on value creation is centered on the concepts of intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management (KM). IC refers to the overall intellectual assets that the company owns or possesses (Roos and Roos, 1997; Stewart, 1997; Sullivan, 1998) while KM refers to the processes and practices that enable firms to manage their intellectual assets and to achieve knowledge-based competitive advantages (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Heisig, 2009; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Von Krogh, 1998). Given that both IC and KM literatures address the effect of intangibles on value creation and organizational success, they would be expected to be intertwined and parallel. However, these literatures largely use different perspectives and foundations due to their varying scholarly traditions. IC literature often adopts a static stock perspective, and KM literature a more dynamic, processual viewpoint (Kianto, 2007; Kianto et al., 2014). While the extant literatures have provided the basic understanding on how an organization’s knowledge resources and its practices to manage knowledge are associated with its performance, few studies have utilized both IC and KM approaches. This study argues that combining the static and dynamic – or the stock and flow – perspectives of knowledge yields a more comprehensive understanding of intangible bases of value creation than addressing only one side of the phenomenon. To address the above-mentioned research gap, this study empirically examines how the firm’s knowledge base (i.e. IC) and its ability to utilize and develop this base (i.e. KM) are associated with firm performance outcomes. The purpose is to examine firms with different profiles based on their overall levels of IC and knowledge management practices (KMP), and to identify any differences in innovation and market performance between firms with those profiles. The study utilizes a survey data set collected from 259 Finnish companies with at least 100 employees, and then statistically analyzes differences in innovation and market performance between four different IC/KMP firm profiles. Categorizing the data into four groups with high/low IC and KMP profiles reveals statistically significant group differences for innovation and market performance. The comparison of the four profiles shows that the firms strong both in overall IC and KMP are likely to outperform the firms with low overall IC and low KMP on both market and innovation performance measures. In addition, firms with a high level of IC but low usage of KMP enjoy equally strong innovation performance as those firms high in IC and KMP. This paper is among the first attempts to merge the IC and KM disciplines to find out which configurations could yield organizational benefits in terms of innovation and market performance outcomes. The results thus respond to the recent calls for research that would combine IC and KM perspectives (Hsu and Sabherwal, 2012; Kianto et al., 2014; Seleim and Khalil, 2011). The results also contribute to the broader scholarly discussion of the knowledge-based view (KBV), where knowledge-based assets are seen as both resources and capabilities (Grant, 1996; Spender, 1996).