Human Resource, IT Competency And Organizational Performance: The Study Of Causing Factors And Effects Of Knowledge Management Strategy

Knowledge management was studied by more and more scholars in the era of knowledge economy. The relationship between knowledge management strategy and organizational performance was an important issue among the researches of knowledge management. But most of the researches were implemented through the way of theory study, and the results were scattered because of the different typologies of knowledge management strategy, lack of theory integration and empirical evidence especially the evidence from china. Also there is a dispute about how to implement knowledge management strategies. Second, the research about the cause factors of knowledge management strategies inside the enterprise remains in the phase of theory discussion, lacking in-depth findings of the impact mechanism. Taking RBV as a research perspective, this dissertation studied the cause factors and performance results of knowledge management strategies, and the following issues were discussed: 1) Are the following knowledge management strategies such as: codification, personalization, exploration, exploitation, internal learning and external learning all exert positive impact on organization performance under the same framework; 2) In what way should the enterprise implement the knowledge management strategies; 3) What factors inside the enterprise will impact knowledge management strategies, and how; 4) How could the key resource inside the enterprise exerts impact on organizational performance under the influence of knowledge management strategies; 5) Is there any different impact among different kinds of Chinese firms.The conceptual model and the hypothesis were raised after literature review. To support the hypothesis, we developed the instrument of knowledge management strategy through the procedure of expert opinion, enterprises interview, pretest, and two times of data collection. The second time of sample study obtains 397 valid questionnaires from enterprises distributed in eastern, middle, and western parts of China, and the data was analyzed by regression analysis and structural equation model approaches, and different kinds of firms were compared, findings show that:①Knowledge management strategies have significant positive impact on organizational performance. Six kinds of knowledge management strategies which classified by three different criterion all show positive impact on organizational performance. ②There is complementarity exits among different knowledge management strategies, enterprise who implement the combining knowledge management strategy can achieve higher levels of organizational performance through the synergistic effect of knowledge management strategies. And this effect is significant in state owned enterprises (SOEs) and manufacturing firms.③The resource and competency inside enterprise such as human resource and IT competency are causing factors of knowledge management strategies, and exert positive impact on them. Human resource strategic value and uniqueness have positive influences on six different knowledge management strategies. And IT competency also has positive effect on them. The two positive effects are different among different kinds of Chinese firms.④Human resource uniqueness have both direct and indirect positive impact on organizational performance. Although human resource strategic value hardly has direct impact on organizational performance, it has indirect impact on organizational performance through IT competency and knowledge management strategies. But this effect is relatively lower in SOEs.⑤As a key resource, human resource can facilitate the formation of IT competency. Human resource strategic value and uniqueness have positive impact on IT competency, which means the competitive advantage from IT competency is based on the integration of human resource. This positive effect is relatively higher in private enterprises and manufacturing firms.⑥IT competency can affect organizational performance through knowledge management strategies. The mechanism is that IT facilities integrated and embedded by human resource to form IT competency, after this process IT competency accelerates organizational performance through knowledge management strategies. This positive effect is relatively higher in SOEs and manufacturing firms.The contribution of this dissertation is:①Six knowledge management strategies such as: codification, personalization, exploration, exploitation, internal learning and external learning all show positive impact on organizational performance under the framework of this dissertation. And different knowledge management strategies can be implemented together to form the complemented knowledge management strategy, and this will facilitate organizational performance. Under Chinese context, this effect is different among different kinds of firms. This result provides evidence for the exiting theory under Chinese context, and enriches the theory of knowledge management strategy.②Human resource and IT competency show the positive impact on knowledge management strategy. Taking RBV as research perspective, two affecting factors were found: human resource and IT competency. And the result shows: human resource strategic value and uniqueness have positive impact on the six knowledge management strategies. IT competency also has positive impact on the six knowledge management strategies. But the two effects are different among different firms, under Chinese context. This result not only enriches the theory of knowledge management strategy, provides RBV evidence of Chinese context in knowledge management strategy field but also.③Human resource can facilitate the formation of IT competency, and under the impact of knowledge management strategies, there is a special impact mechanism which human resource exert on organizational performance, But the positive effects to the organizational variables are different among different Chinese firms. Among the two dimension of human resource, human resource uniqueness has both direct and indirect positive impact on organizational performance, but human resource strategic value do not have any direct positive impact on organizational performance; still it can exert indirect positive impact through IT competency and knowledge management strategy. This result provides an explanation of the impact mechanism which human resource exert on organizational performance under Chinese context, and this enriches the related theory.