Two knowledge perspectives to growth management
| Pages | 473-494 |
| Date | 09 November 2015 |
| Published date | 09 November 2015 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/VINE-11-2014-0063 |
| Author | Harri Laihonen,Antti Lönnqvist,Juha Metsälä |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,Knowledge management systems |
Two knowledge perspectives to
growth management
Harri Laihonen and Antti Lönnqvist
School of Management, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland, and
Juha Metsälä
Pohjola Rakennus Ltd., Tampere, Finland
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the connections between an organization’s
knowledge management and growth management strategies. The study shows how knowledge
management can support organizations’ growth objectives.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper rst connects the literature streams of growth
management and knowledge management. This conceptual understanding about growth-oriented
knowledge management is then advanced through an exploratory case study of a company aiming at
rapid growth in the construction industry.
Findings – The paper recognizes two knowledge perspectives to growth management. First, the
perspective of knowledge assets concerns whether an organization has the needed knowledge
resources to enable growth. Second, to make informed decisions, the management needs relevant
and up-to-date information. From these viewpoints, the paper derives the case-specic
cornerstones of growth-oriented knowledge management and suggests some paths forward in
terms of future research.
Practical implications – Although growth strategy denes an organization’s growth aims and
claries how the intended growth will be attained, knowledge strategy takes a stand on the needed
knowledge assets and paints a path from the existing knowledge base to a state where organization’s
knowledge assets enable reaching of its business goals. The paper helps practitioners to plan
growth-oriented knowledge management strategies.
Originality/value – The paper contributes by extending the analysis of knowledge strategy to
growth management and by providing a practical illustration of the development process where
knowledge was put into prime focus of organization’s growth strategy. The paper also provides original
data and perspective to the roles and interaction of the board and the management team in the case of
growth management.
Keywords Knowledge management, Growth management, Knowledge strategy
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Growth is an important business objective for many organizations. Growth
literature intends to understand how organizations grow and how growth can be
managed (Penrose, 1959;Weinzimmer, 2000;Dobbs and Hamilton, 2007). At the
same time, knowledge is recognized as a source of competitive advantage (Grant,
1996;Spender, 1996) and knowledge management as a lever of organizational
performance (Wiig, 1997;Mahdi et al., 2011;Wu and Chen, 2014). Especially, the
importance of a knowledge strategy for organizational success, and knowledge
management, in particular, has been recognized (Zack, 1999;Hansen et al., 1999;
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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Growth
management
473
Received 27 November 2014
Revised 9 February 2015
11 June 2015
Accepted 29 July 2015
VINE
Vol.45 No. 4, 2015
pp.473-494
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0305-5728
DOI 10.1108/VINE-11-2014-0063
Liu et al., 2013;Venkitachalam and Willmott, 2013;Massingham, 2014). Although
there is evidence and active research considering the linkage between the two
management disciplines – growth and knowledge management (e.g. Salojärvi et al.,
2005;Basly, 2007;Lundvall and Nielsen, 2007;Yang, 2010;Hitt et al., 2000;Choi
et al., 2008;Choi and Lee, 2002,2003) – what seems to be missing is a more focused
analysis of knowledge management strategies supporting growth. It is unclear
which knowledge management strategies best support this particular business
objective and its management and what are those concrete methods that could help
organizations to begin their knowledge journey. From a pragmatic managerial
perspective, it is unclear how the management should proceed with developing such
knowledge-related strategies and actions that are suited for the growth objectives
and contextual conditions in a given situation.
This paper addresses the aforementioned gap in connection to knowledge-based
view of the rm (Grant, 1996) and aims to answer the research question: how can
knowledge management serve organizations’ growth aims? Thus, the paper considers
knowledge as critical input in production and a primary source of value. The research on
organizational growth has not found a universal strategy for growth (Andersson, 2003;
Gibb and Davies, 1990;Smallbone and Wyer, 2000) and, therefore, the paper focuses on
growth determinants as mediators of organizational growth. Growth determinants are
categorized into individual, organizational and industry-specic determinants (cf.
Andersson, 2003;Weinzimmer, 2000) and the paper studies how knowledge
management can support growth through these mediating factors and help in solving
management challenges confronted by the growing organizations (cf. Pundziene et al.,
2006).
The literature emphasizes the context-specic nature of growth determinants
and knowledge management strategies (e.g. Bierly and Chakrabarti, 1996;Hansen
et al., 1999;Käpylä et al., 2011;Liu et al., 2013). This means that growth can be
attained by different strategies, which brings support for the selection of a
qualitative case approach (Eisenhardt, 1989;Gummesson, 2000;Yin, 2009). The
paper seeks a deeper understanding about the phenomenon of knowledge-based
growth in one particular exploratory case study. The empirical part of the study,
which is elaborated more thoroughly in Section 3, uncovers how the case
organization’s executive board and management team understand the linkage of
knowledge and growth, and further, to learn how growth can be inuenced and
supported by knowledge management initiatives. Although previous literature has
focused mainly on external evaluation of growth determinants and justifying the
linkage between knowledge management and growth (e.g. Salojärvi et al., 2005;
Lundvall and Nielsen, 2007), this paper takes an internal view and aims to
understand how knowledge should be managed to support growth. Although
growth determinants are context-specic, it is expected that some key
characteristics of a growth-oriented knowledge management strategy are general.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section reviews the literature
on growth determinants and presents two knowledge perspectives to growth
management. Section 3 describes the methodology. Section 4 summarizes the main
results of an exploratory case study. Section 5 analyzes the results and generalizes the
case experiences. Finally, in Section 6, conclusions and suggestions for further research
are presented.
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