Gestão do conhecimento

Academy of Management Journal 2012, Vol. 55, No. 2, 421–457. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2008.0352

FROM COMMON TO UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE: FOUNDATIONS OF FIRM-SPECIFIC USE OF KNOWLEDGE AS A RESOURCE
RAJIV NAG Georgia State University DENNIS A. GIOIA The Pennsylvania State University
Although the knowledge-based view of strategy has significantly advanced understanding of the foundations of competitive advantage, less is known about how knowledge becomes a strategic resource. In this study, we develop an inductive, process model of the relationships among (1) top managers’ beliefs about knowledge as a resource (termed executive knowledge schemes), (2) the ways that executives search or scan for knowledge, and (3) how they use that knowledge in practice to transform common knowledge into distinctive, uncommon knowledge as a way of achieving competitive advantage. In the course of generating the grounded model, we also uncovered a new concept, scanning proactiveness, and identified two distinct forms of knowledge use in practice: knowledge adaptation and knowledge augmentation.

One of the most venerable observations about knowledge is Francis Bacon’s dictum that “knowledge is power.” Management scholars have now firmly established the role of knowledge as one of the key competitive resources of modern times (Drucker, 1993; Penrose, 1959) and have underscored the importance of knowledge in strategic and competitive contexts by proposing a knowledge-based view of the firm (Grant, 1996; Kogut &
We are indebted to Bob Voigt for aiding our access to the U.S. metal-casting industry and counseling us about the workings of foundries. We thank Don Hambrick and Wenpin Tsai for their valuable consultations during the execution of this project. We also thank Pam Barr and Arun Kumaraswamy for their detailed peer reviews of the paper and Claus Rerup, Tom Schuessler, and Susmita Sil for their helpful insights. Thanks also to three anonymous reviewers who provided many helpful