A meta-analysis study on the relationship between strategic km and firm performance

Abstract

Strategic knowledge management can increase organisational performance because strategic knowledge management emphasizes management of intellectual resources to create unique value to the firms which enables the firms to craft their business strategies based on knowledge-driven advantages they own over their rivals and make strategic decisions of sharing, creation, application of knowledge following the overall strategic objectives of the firms. Nevertheless, the relationships between the strategic knowledge management and firm performance are still inconsistent from the present empirical studies. This study aims to investigate the relationship between strategic knowledge management and financial performance of firms with a meta-analysis method. This study also tries to explore the impacts of national culture on the strategic knowledge management-financial performance relationship. This study finds that strategic knowledge management was positively related to financial performance of firms. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first paper that applied a meta-analysis approach to examine the strategic knowledge management-financial performance relationship based on 1,422 subjects. It contributes to knowledge management theory by reducing heterogeneity of the strategic knowledge management-financial performance relationship. This study helps knowledge management practitioners to deepen understanding of the importance of strategic knowledge management for firms to sustain their competitive advantages. It is necessary for firms to initiate strategic knowledge management to leverage their knowledge assets by strategic knowledge management planning.