Linking Knowledge Management Activities to Innovation Capability : Focused on IT Service Industry

지식 경영 활동의 혁신 역량으로의 연계 : IT 서비스 산업 중심으로

Given the large investment and prevalence of knowledge management (KM) in organizations, it has become important to analyze the effects of KM activities on organizational performances. A theoretical framework is proposed to investigate the impact of KM activities on innovation capabilities in the IT service industry. This study considers KM activities as the major determinant that enhances absorptive capacity. KM activities enhance employees'ability to obtain external knowledge, resulting in increasing intellectual capital. Thus, this study proposes that absorptive capacity plays a mediating role between KM activities and innovation capability. Additionally, this study investigates the key antecedents of KM activities that promote employees' knowledge sharing. Based on prior studies on KM, this study posits KM team activities and top manager support as KM activities. The proposed research model was tested by using survey data collected from 556 employees in the IT service industry. PLS (partial least squares) was employed for the analysis of the data. The findings of this study showed that KM activities and absorptive capabilities play a significant role in enhancing service innovation and process innovation in the IT service industry. The results also shed light on the mediating role of absorptive capacity between KM activities and innovation capability. Moreover, both KM team activities and top manager support serve as the salient antecedents of promoting employees' knowledge sharing.