Knowledge Management Capability And Firm Performance:the Mediating Role Of Organizational Agility

Along with the arrival of knowledge economy, knowledge as an important intangible asset in business has become the core competitiveness of enterprises. Facts have proved that knowledge management which plays an important role in the competitiveness strength of enterprise, has become a key factor in affecting the ability of value creation. Knowledge management capability can help companies promote product innovation, improve market responsiveness, and reduce redundant information and knowledge, which lead to competitive business performance. Therefore, the ability to effectively implement knowledge management capability is an important strategic issue about the success of an organization. However, some scholars have noted that the impact of knowledge management capability on firm performance is not straight forward, they tried to open the "black box" to explore the potential influencing mechanisms of knowledge management capability on business performance.In the context of economic globalization, the market competition is increasingly fierce. Rapid responses to customers, the pursuit of the maximization of customer value and building agile enterprises have become a necessary means to improve the competitiveness of enterprises. From the viewpoint of dynamic capability theory, this study confirmed that the organizational agility as a kind of important dynamic ability can have a positive impact on enterprise performance. Knowledge management capability is a key factor of enterprise agility competition, so combining knowledge management capability and organizational agility, which conforms to the needs of the times, has become the focus of attentions from scholars. This paper reviews the related literature on knowledge management capability, learning and organizational agility. We propose that the potential impact of knowledge management capability on business performance is achieved through the mediating effect of organizational agility.We collect data through using survey questionnaires to some Chinese business executives studying in an educational institution. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS and PLS software. And we test the hypotheses by the data results. Survey data from211firms indicate that not only the two dimensions (exploration and exploitation) of knowledge management capability have a positive impact on the two dimensions of organizational agility (operational adjustment agility and market capitalizing agility), but also the two dimensions of organizational agility fully mediate the influence of knowledge management capabilities on firm performance. In addition, the relationship intensions of the two knowledge management capability on organizational agility are distinguishing, and exploration knowledge management capability has a stronger influence on both dimensions of organizational agility than exploitation knowledge management capability.This study enriches the empirical studies about the relationship among knowledge management capability, organizational agility and firm performance. Also, we consider knowledge management capability as the antecedent of organizational agility. The multidimensional relationship between knowledge management capability and organizational agility is extended. Refer to the classification of organizational learning, we divide knowledge management capability into exploration knowledge management capability and exploitation knowledge management capability, which is a kind of innovation. This way of classification not only help explore the nature based on the essence of knowledge management, but also help us explore the potential influence mechanism of knowledge management capability from a new angle of dynamic capabilities theory, namely through the mediating role of organizational agility, and then influence business performance.