A Study on the Relationship between the Typology of Knowledge-Intensive Businesses (KIBs) and Performance Measurement Systems (PMS): Evidence from Taiwan

Abstract

This study utilizes the source of knowledge (internal or external) to derive four types of knowledge-intensive businesses (KIBs): non-KIB, knowledge creator, knowledge introducer, and knowledge integrator. Moreover, this study investigates the differences among the four types of KIB in their organizational characteristics and performance measurement system (PMS). The proposed model is empirically evaluated using survey data collected from top or middle managers of 127 Taiwan companies in which 109 companies are classified as KIBs. Based on the analysis of multiple regressions and MANOVA, the empirical results reveal that there are significant differences in the organizational characteristics and PMS among the four types of KIBs. There are three main contributions in this research: (1) we categorize the KIBs into four types by using the main source of internal or external knowledge in the companies. This typology of KIBs would contribute to our understanding of knowledge management. (2) This study uses environmental uncertainty, innovation strategy, size and absorptive capacity to construct the organizational configuration of different KIBs. (3) We find that there are significant differences among the four types of KIB in the financial or non-financial PMS.