Daniela Carlucci

The knowledge value chain: how intellectual capital impacts on business performance

This theoretical paper explores the fundamental issue of how knowledge management initiatives impact business performance. Reflecting on the management literature in the fields of knowledge management and performance management enabled the deduction of four basic assumptions, representing the links of a conceptual cause-and-effect framework – the knowledge value chain. Drawing on the resource-based view and the competence-based view of the firm, the paper identifies strategic, managerial, and operational dimensions of knowledge management. The review of performance management frameworks discusses the role of knowledge management in those models. These reflections allow linking knowledge management with core competencies, strategic processes, business performance, and finally, with value creation.

Knowledge assets value creation map

The paper presents an application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology to support the complex decision making process concerning with the development of causal models showing how organisational knowledge assets contribute to create companys value. The research is grounded in the resource-based view of the firm, which argues that organisational resources are bundled together. This involves difficulties in understanding which are the most important knowledge assets and how they contribute to companys performance improvements. The application of the AHP allows to assess the weights for setting the priorities among knowledge assets against the companys performance targets. Adopting the AHP, the knowledge assets value creation map (KAVCM) is proposed as an approach to visualise and analyse the cause-and-effect relationships linking knowledge assets with companys performance. This allows to understand how to lever and drive knowledge assets in order to sustain companys value creation dynamics. The application of the KAVCM is, finally, tested by its application to the identification of the knowledge assets value drivers at the basis of NPD performance improvements within an Italian leader company operating in sofa industry.

The Knoware Tree and the Regional Intellectual Capital Index

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance of intellectual capital (IC) as a strategic resource and source of regional value creation dynamics. Adopting a knowledge‐based approach, the authors aim to argue that knowledge assets represent the ICs components, and the Knoware Tree and the Knoware Dashboard are proposed as frameworks to assess the IC within regions. For the global assessment of the IC, the Regional Intellectual Capital Index (RICI) is to be introduced and its application is proposed for the assessment of the IC within Italian regions. Finally, in order to explore the links between the IC ownership of a region and its value creation dynamics, the Value Creation Index (VCI) is adopted and linear correlations of the RICI and VCI are performed, providing first empirical evidences of the positive links between IC and value creation.Design/methodology/approach – The paper integrates the results of an intensive literature review with a longitudinal empirical research applie...

Applying a systems thinking framework to assess knowledge assets dynamics for business performance improvement

Knowledge assets represent strategic resources and sources of organizational value creation. Their effective development and deployment is at the basis of organizational value creation capacity. However there is still a lack of applied approaches and tools explaining how knowledge assets dynamics take place in organizational value creation mechanisms. In particular, there is a managerial need to define decision-support frameworks that can enable managers to understand how knowledge assets interact each other and with organizational performance in order to support the achievement of companys strategic objectives. A better understanding of why and how knowledge assets management initiatives can be turned into value creation mechanisms with positive impacts on business performance is fundamental to avoid misallocation of resources and to support management decisions. This paper proposes a systems thinking-based framework, the Knowledge Assets Dynamics Value Map (KAVDM), to explicate the working mechanisms by means knowledge assets can evolve on the basis of knowledge management initiatives and affect business performance improvements. The KAVDM offers a holistic view of the mechanisms at the basis of how knowledge assets are translated into organizational value. It supports the explanation and monitoring of how knowledge assets are interpedently and dependently linked, and how the management of one knowledge asset activates flow dynamics, that influence both other knowledge assets and business performance. Using the KAVDM managers can reflect upon the knowledge components grounding a companys value creation and assess their mental models and views of the reality. Finally, an application of the KAVDM within a construction company is presented and its main managerial benefits addressed.

Applying the analytic network process to disclose knowledge assets value creation dynamics

The recent literature grounded on the resource and knowledge-based view of the firm, has widely outlined the importance of knowledge assets as well as of the management approaches of their development. However, only few contributions have investigated the mechanisms by which these resources interact to sustain companys value creation dynamics. In particular, there is a lack of approaches suitable to disentangle those mechanisms and to explain how knowledge assets cluster and interplay in improving organisational performance.A clear understanding of how knowledge assets take part in value creation allows to identify those knowledge assets which, due to their critical role in achieving the companys performance objectives, need to be managed and appropriately exploited.This paper proposes a model, based on the analytic network process (ANP) methodology, to disclose and assess how knowledge assets mutually interact and take part in companys value creation dynamics. The application of the ANP allows to reveal and to evaluate the dependencies and inter-dependencies linking knowledge assets to organisational performance objectives and to set priorities among knowledge assets against targeted performance. The application of the model is tested by its application to the identification of the knowledge assets value drivers at the basis of NPD performances improvement within an engineering company located in South of Italy.

Evaluating and selecting key performance indicators: an ANP-based model

Purpose – Selecting the most meaningful performance indicators, i.e. key performance indicators (KPIs), represents one of the major challenges that companies have to face for developing an effective performance measurement system (PMS). Selecting KPIs can be interpreted as a multiple criteria decision‐making (MCDM) problem, involving a number of factors and related interdependencies. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model, based on the analytic network process (ANP), for driving managers in the selection of KIPs. The model draws upon the consideration that KPIs can be evaluated and selected on the basis of a set of criteria, theoretically founded, and the feedback dependencies between the criteria and performance indicators as well as among indicators.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a review of management literature regarding the information quality required by performance measures, the paper identifies a set of criteria for selecting KIPs. The criteria form the building blocks of the prop...

Intellectual capital management in practice: assessment of implementation and outcomes

In recent decades, a huge variety of models for managing intellectual capital (IC) have been generated. However, understanding how IC management (ICM) models operate in practice and the issues that may be encountered when they are implemented remain a challenging issue. This is because there seems to be a significant gap between the enthusiastic development of ICM models in theory and the application of these models in companies. Therefore, more practically grounded research needs to be carried out. Reporting on action research projects and an interview study, this paper enriches the existing theoretical and framework-oriented IC literature by examining empirically the implementation of ICM projects and their outcomes in six Finnish companies. The findings of the paper include the challenges and success factors affecting the development of ICM projects, likewise the related outcomes and benefits. This provides useful insights for applying ICM to practice.

Managing knowledge processes for value creation

Purpose – Nowadays organizations have realized that knowledge, its effective use and the fast acquisition and utilization of new knowledge represent the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. In fact, an effective exploitation and management of knowledge resources are the basis of the development of those capabilities that ground the organizations capacity to deliver successfully targeted value propositions. During recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the processes of management of knowledge resources. Currently the debate on knowledge management processes is still lively. The dynamics which link knowledge processes to value creation, the valuation of their impact on organizational performance and the role of some organizational and technological resources as enablers or restraints of successful knowledge management emerge as relevant topics to be investigated. This introduction to the special issue aims to develop some theoretical and managerial reasons explaining the importan...

Evaluating service quality dimensions as antecedents to outpatient satisfaction using back propagation neural network

Nowadays the ability to provide outpatient services with exceptional quality is paramount to long-term survival of hospitals, as the revenues from outpatient services are predicted to equal or exceed inpatient revenues in the near future. Identifying the relative weight of different dimensions of healthcare quality service which concur together to determine outpatients satisfaction is very important, as it can help healthcare managers to allocate resources more efficiently and identify managerial actions able to guarantee higher levels of patients’ satisfaction. This study proposes the use of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) as a knowledge discovery technique for identifying the service quality factors that are important to outpatient. An ANN model is developed on data from a panel of outpatients of public healthcare services.

Knowledge-intensity as an organisational characteristic

The sector of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) has a central role in modern economies. However, there are no explicit and generally acknowledged criteria for characterising KIBS or other knowledge-intensive organisations. In addition, the concept of knowledge-intensity has no significant managerial use. This paper aims to widen the existing understanding about the concept of knowledge-intensity and take a step towards its operational application and managerial usefulness. Methodologically, two steps are carried out. First, a conceptual study based on intellectual capital literature and literature on knowledge-intensive firms is carried out. Second, an interview study (n=8) is carried out to empirically examine the role of knowledge assets in selected KIBS organisations. This paper contributes by tackling the vagueness of the concept of knowledge-intensity: the paper demonstrates that there are different types of ‘knowledge-intensity profiles’ among KIBS companies and that knowledge assets can be used as an analytical framework to identify the sources of value creation.