Purpose -To provide important empirical evidence to support the role of knowledge management within firms.Design/methodology/approach -Data were collected using a mail survey sent to CEOs representing firms with 50 or more employees from a cross-section of industries. A total of 1,743 surveys were mailed out and 443 were returned and usable (27.8 percent response rate). The sample was checked for response and non-response bias. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling.Findings -This paper presents knowledge management as a coordinating mechanism. Empirical evidence supports the view that a firm with a knowledge management capability will use resources more efficiently and so will be more innovative and perform better.Research limitations/implications -The sample slightly over-represented larger firms. Data were also collected in New Zealand. As with most studies, it is important to replicate this study in different contexts.Practical implications -Knowledge management is embraced in many organizations and requires a business case to justify expenditure on programs to implement knowledge management behaviours and practices or hardware and software solutions. This paper provides support for the importance of knowledge management to enhance innovation and performance.Originality/value -This paper is one of the first to find empirical support for the role of knowledge management within firms. Further, the positioning of knowledge management as a coordinating mechanism is also an important contribution to our thinking on this topic.

The management of knowledge is frequently identified as an important antecedent of innovation (

Knowledge management has recently emerged as a new discipline and is generating considerable interest among academics and managers. Given its newness, there is still little guidance in the extant literature on how to measure knowledge management. This paper presents the ®rst scale developed to measure knowledge management behaviors and practices and in so doing provides construct boundaries that should enable the development of a theory of knowledge management (Zaltman et al., 1973).

Purpose -The paper aims to explore how large firms might leverage entrepreneurial marketing processes to gain and renew competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach -The paper applies past research on entrepreneurial marketing and entrepreneurship with examples from a long-term case study of firms in New Zealand, Sweden, the UK, and the USA to illustrate how entrepreneurial marketing processes can be strategically employed by large firms to create or discover, assess, and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities more effectively and efficiently. Findings -The paper offers insight into how large firms leverage entrepreneurial marketing processes to gain advantage. The findings suggest that, in free and open markets, entrepreneurial marketing processes can be strategically employed to create superior value for the firm's customers and owners. Originality/value -The paper contributes to the work of both academics working at the marketing/entrepreneurship interface and executives seeking to leverage marketing to create competitive advantage.

This paper presents the findings of a study of the perceptions of the barriers to internationalisation by 561 New Zealand Entrepreneurial New Ventures (ENVs). Significant differences in the perception of the barriers are identified according to the level of international activity of New Zealand ENVs. Exporters and likely exporters consider the main barriers to internationalisation to be finance and cost-related factors. A lack of New Zealand government incentives are also seen to be major barriers for these two groups with likely exporters also perceiving their lack of international experience to be a hindrance. By comparison non-exporters perceive firm size to be the biggest barrier to internationalisation followed by a lack of market knowledge and experience. Industry was found to have no influence on the perception of barriers to internationalisation, however, firm size does have an impact. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2004internationalisation, entrepreneurial firms, barriers to export,