How do Miles and Snow's strategic types differ in their knowledge assets? Evidence from Italian SMEs

Silvia Massa and Stefania Testa

Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 2009, vol. 7, issue 4, 377-386

Abstract: This paper takes a knowledge-based view of firms and discusses the importance of linking organizational knowledge assets into corporate strategy. In order to conceptualize knowledge assets, the paper adopts the intellectual capital (IC) framework, which distinguishes three IC components: human, structural and relational capital. As regards business strategy, the paper adopts Miles and Snow's model, which identifies three strategic types of successful organizations: Defenders, Analysers and Prospectors. The paper explores the ways in which the three strategic types differ in weighting the single components of their IC. This study represents an attempt to extend the Miles and Snow typology including the aspect of knowledge assets. The link between knowledge asset management and strategy is investigated by means of three case studies conducted in Italian small and medium enterprises from the food sector. The paper argues that firms of different Miles and Snow strategic types have different mix of IC components.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/kmrp.2009.30 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tkmrxx:v:7:y:2009:i:4:p:377-386

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tkmr20

DOI: 10.1057/kmrp.2009.30

Access Statistics for this article

Knowledge Management Research & Practice is currently edited by Giovanni Schiuma

More articles in Knowledge Management Research & Practice from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().