Strategic factor markets: expectations, luck, and business strategy
Management Science
Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
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The knowledge-based view provides a powerful perspective for analyzing and understanding the firm. However, some of its assumptions have proven difficult to operationalize, making hypothesis testing difficult. One strategically important assumption is that firm competitive advantage depends on effective integrating processes. This paper develops a more precise specification of “effective” integrating processes. Then, two integrating processes are modeled using an agent-based simulation approach to test a set of factors believed to influence knowledge transfer and application. Results support several hypotheses generated by the knowledge-based view including: (1) greater levels of tacit knowledge transfer enhance the performance benefits gained from integrating processes, and (2) integrating processes with greater task uncertainty benefit from more formal information communication. The results also suggest that the design and management of firm integrating processes is a complex undertaking that requires a clear understanding of (1) the primary performance measure(s) used to evaluate the process, (2) the nature of the process tasks (e.g., routine vs. idiosyncratic), and (3) the knowledge required to perform those tasks (e.g., explicit vs. tacit).