Harmonizing Firms' Knowledge and Strategies with Organizational Capabilities

Abstract

Existing literature has recognized that superior organizational capabilities, primarily stemming from knowledge integration, bring firms strong strategic outcomes. This article argues that organizational capability can be used as a bridge to explain relationships involving strategy and knowledge. It provides a formal framework, Strategy-Capability-Knowledge (SCK) link, where organizational capabilities are harmonized with firms' knowledge and strategies. The framework describes a harmonious analysis that firms' strategies can be derived to needed organizational capabilities and applied to underlying knowledge, equally, appropriate sets of knowledge help firms create capabilities, then contribute to achievement of the firms' strategies. Additionally, capability and knowledge gaps on the basis of the SCK link are analyzed to explain the path of how knowledge can help a firm achieve its strategic goals, and further, to align its knowledge management with its strategies. A real-world case study is conducted to explain the application of the SCK link and the gap analyses.

• Knowledge management
• Knowledge gap
• Strategy
• Organizational capability
• Capability gap