سهام و جریان های اساسی قابلیت مدیریت دانش سازمان: مکمل های هم افزایی در مقابل مکمل های مشروط در طول زمان

What are the components of a knowledge management (KM) capability and how do they impact firm performance? Based on prior research, we modeled a firm's KM capability in terms of its accumulations of stock – in the areas of human resources, technology infrastructures, and strategic templates – and regulation of flow, via institutionalization and internal and external learning processes. We then considered the extent to which these components complement one another in their impact on two types of firm performance – efficiency, based return on assets, and value creation, assessed as Tobin's q (the ratio of the capital market value of the firm to the replacement value of its assets). We posited differential types of stock-flow complementarities across these two performance outcomes over time – stable, positive effects on firm efficiency, synergistic complementarity, and initially positive, but subsequently negative effects on value creation, contingent complementarity. Data gathered from 218 Korean firms supported this premise. Implications for practice in the evolving fields of organizational capability and complementarities were explored.

Understanding a firm's knowledge management (KM) capability is essential to both efficient deployment of the firm's resources and growth of its value. Research has described components of a KM capability and demonstrated its impacts on firm performance [16]. However, a holistic picture of the structure and impacts of a KM capability has yet to emerge. How do components of a KM capability influence firm performance? Does the nature of the interaction differ for different aspects of firm performance? Do these effects change over time? These were the focal questions we addressed. We consider the interaction among KM capability components through the lens of complementarity: this recognizes that valorization of activities in one realm is a function of commensurate activities – investments and/or supporting decisions – in other realms. Complementarity is the patterning of design elements that individually confer no, or limited, organizational advantage. Further, the inimitability of capabilities derives from complementarities. Competitive advantage occurs when the organization applies methods that are valuable to users but are difficult for others to duplicate. While complementarities have been visible in myriad areas [15], they have not been explored in the context of firms’ KM capabilities. A lifecycle perspective of organizational capabilities suggests that capabilities are seldom valuable indefinitely [9]. Work by Gilbert [8] suggests that complementarity may be one mechanism by which capabilities decline over time. Specifically, the coupling inherent in complementarities makes it difficult to change them. In designing organizations and organizational capabilities, Argote et al. [2] suggested that “research is needed to identify dimensions of fit and to specify a priori when components fit each other and when they do not”. We began our work by re-conceptualizing a KM capability in terms of firms’ accumulation of knowledge stocks and their management of knowledge flow. We conceptualize two forms of complementarity and consider the way in which the age of a KM capability determines which complementarity is relevant to the capability and performance relationship, specifically examining two disparate aspects of firm performance – efficiency and value creation. Impacts of a KM capability on organizational performance were then empirically tested using data from 218 Korean firms that had implemented enterprise-wide KM systems. KM became important to Korean organizations after the foreign exchange crisis, which caused many to suggest that a national knowledge economy was needed. Before the crisis, the market capitalization ratio in Korean firms was 75% for tangible and 25% for intangible assets; in the knowledge economy that emerged following the crisis, this allocation was reversed, with 75% normally being allotted to intangible assets and 25% to tangible resources. This national-level attention to KM ensured that KM capabilities were considered by a firm despite variations in the KM capabilities across firms.

8.1. Limitations It is important to note the limitations of our study. First, the sample was restricted to South Korean firms, especially affiliated firms of business conglomerates, a context that places a premium on effective KM. This limits the generalizability of the findings. Second, the sampling frame was constructed from success stories published in popular magazines, practitioner literature on KM, and academic case studies, i.e., about organizations that were noted for success in their KM initiatives. This could have engendered a problem, because the range of the KM capability was artificially restricted to successful activities. A more heterogeneous set of organizations might result in explaining a greater amount of the variance in both ROA, approximately 20% (∼54% − 34%) in our study, and Tobin's q – barely 8% (∼25% − 17%). Specifically, a more heterogeneous sample may have yielded stronger effect sizes for the complementarity tests than the 3.4% in explaining ROA and 1.6% in explaining Tobin's q. Third, our assessment of firms’ value creation, Tobin's q, is premised on the efficient market hypothesis, which has frequently been challenged by behavioral economists who note the prevalence of cognitive biases such as information processing fallacies, overconfidence, and irrational exuberance. Such biases attenuate the reliability of the metric. Finally, organizational performance has been noted as sometimes creating a halo effect, influencing organizational respondents’ perceptions of other organizational phenomena. We cannot rule out the possibility that performance impacted employees’ perceptions of their organization's KM capability with respect to other effects than, firm performance. 8.2. Implications for practice The results of our study have several implications for KM professionals and consultants. First, by specifying the components of the KM capability, we have provided guidance on how a KM capability might be constituted. By demonstrating the validity of our construct (i.e., positive implications for firm performance), we have shown what value firms may obtain from their investment in developing a KM capability. Second, with regard to operation of two disparate forms of complementarity in deployment of a KM capability – the presence of a synergistic complementarity offers organizations a level of flexibility in undertaking a set of complementary activities. Specifically, when an organization lacks the resources to undertake all synergistic complements, the firm can decide to implement them sequentially, ultimately providing performance improvements when all complements are in place. In contrast, the presence of contingent complementarities precludes such flexibility, suggesting the need for an all-or-none strategy. Our third salient finding was that disjuncture between investments in knowledge stocks and flows can be beneficial for value creation in the long run. The market penalized mature complementary investments. Thus investments in a KM capability need to be an ongoing effort and firms need to break out of capability traps, continuously adapting KM capability components to their environment. Finally, our findings regarding complementarity and friction suggested the need for organizational attention to managing the facility. Positive effects of complementarity on efficiency and value creation in the short run suggest the need for a centralized knowledge organization and/or a chief knowledge officer who coordinates relevant knowledge and flows. However, the negative effects of complementarities in older investments suggest that centralized management of a firm's KM capability might be a problem in the long-run. Thus, while centralized management of the KM capability might be desirable in initiating a KM capability, a distributed approach may be more viable in the long-run. 8.3. Academic contributions We conceptualized a KM capability in terms of accumulation of specific stocks (human resources, technology infrastructure, and strategic templates) and the regulation of three key flows or processes (institutionalization, internal and external learning processes). An ancillary contribution was the development and preliminary validation of metrics to assess such a KM capability. Further, the stocks and flows dimensions of the KM capability had a strong direct effect on ROA, explaining 15.4% of its variance. Second, the perspective that complementarity is the heart of organizational capability is still novel. While the complementarity effect sizes that we observed were relatively small, they represent a threshold to what a more heterogeneous population might yield. Our third contribution is that we demonstrated additive and super-additive advantages of stocks and flows vis-à-vis firms’ ROA, suggesting the synergistic form of complementarity. While accumulation of stocks and regulation of flows were independently important to firms’ ROA, their collective advantage surpassed the gains they individually conferred. This provides an additional insight to the complementarity literature – that the complementarity that we observe with respect to efficiency may be synergistic, while the complementarity that we observe with respect to value creation may be contingent. While past research has typically pointed to the advantages that accrue to deployment of complementary assets, our findings suggest that the sustainability of that advantage is difficult if not impossible. A final contribution involves the penalty that accrues to older complementarities. While the resource-based view suggests that time allows the co-evolution of organizational capability and a capability of equal value cannot be developed rapidly, our results suggested that the value of complementarity-based capabilities can also erode over time.