This article focuses on knowledge-intensive organisations. To create substantive consensus on knowledge-intensive organisations, a definition of the associated terms was first formulated. According to Sun (2010), an organisation can be defined as a movement that creates and maintains a social entity to achieve a certain goal. It is a structured, coordinated and purposeful social entity created and maintained by people.
Daft (2008) describes that these social entities are consciously designed as structured and coordinated systems connected to the external environment.
Introduction
This article is based on the thesis Unwanted voluntary staff turnover within knowledge-intensive organisations. This article answers the first sub-question of this thesis.
According to Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001), knowledge is the individual capacity to make distinctions within work based on theory or context. Within organisations, this individual knowledge can be divided into tacit (intangible) and explicit (tangible) knowledge. Tacit knowledge refers to intangible knowledge, often held by individuals, while tangible knowledge, known as explicit knowledge, is mainly based on documented-and therefore easily transferable-knowledge (Choo & Bontis, 2002). As formulated in the problem statement, knowledge-intensive organisations are resource-based such that knowledge is a key resource.
Besides knowledge, employees contain skills and abilities that, together with knowledge, are categorised under human resources. These resources, including knowledge, are important for competitive advantage (Wright et al., 1994). Resource-based knowledge is therefore necessary to resell services or products of organisations (Sarvay, 1999).
Knowledge for competitive advantage
As shown, within knowledge-intensive organisations, human resources are the most important strategic asset and knowledge is an important part of such an organisation's business model (Choo & Bontis, 2002). This makes knowledge the most important part of the key resources of knowledge-intensive organisations. Priem and Butler (2001) call these key resources a prerequisite for competitive advantage within such organisations. Preservation of knowledge-based resources is therefore important to maintain competitive advantage.
Such organisations can respond to this through 'resource-based strategies' that focus on both retention and expansion of knowledge (Chaharbaghi & Lynch, 1999). According to Chaharbaghi and Lynch (1999), constant competitive advantage is based on both resource advantage and strategy advantage. This constant competitive advantage is known as sustainable competitive advantage.
The height of barriers determines how sustainable a competitive advantage is.
Sustainable competitive advantage, according to Oliver (1997), can be defined as the implementation of a value-creating strategy that is not susceptible to imitation and has not yet been applied by competitors. Porter (1985) states that sustainable competitive advantage depends on the height of barriers against imitation of key resources. The height of barriers determines how sustainable a competitive advantage is. An organisation with competitive knowledge advantage is able to extend competitive advantage (Oliver, 1997). This makes it important for knowledge-intensive organisations to maintain this knowledge advantage so that the competitive edge can be maintained and expanded.
Disadvantages of knowledge management
Many knowledge-intensive organisations, in order to maintain sustainable competitive advantage, use knowledge management at a strategic level. If it is assumed that knowledge contains data and information, knowledge management can be defined as management aimed at individuals to retrieve potentially useful information (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). According to Choo and Bontis (2002), the main context in which knowledge management finds itself is an organisation's strategy. When knowledge management involves knowledge that is so deeply rooted in routines and experience, it is likely to be unique and difficult to reproduce (Choo & Bontis, 2002).
Coding knowledge within these systems makes it less easy for competitors to imitate knowledge.
Within organisations such as McKinsey, IBM or HP, knowledge management, within the culture of the respective organisation, has developed organically (Sarvay, 2002). Coding knowledge within these systems makes it less easy for competitors to imitate knowledge. In contrast, this leads to poorer performance within the organisation. Performance is suppressed by procedures and systems and the amount of extra information that is not relevant to the work will further increase. Only when knowledge offers such an advantage that it cancels out costs due to coding does it make sense to apply knowledge coding (Schulz & Jobe, 2001).
Power shift to employees
Shifting from lifetime employment to lifetime employability, through social acceptance, bonding is a less certain factor (Forrier & Sels, 2003). They argue that lifetime employment is the ability by which an individual is able to perform various functions within the current labour market. The power in the labour market, due to unique skills, abilities and knowledge available to employees, shifts more strongly to the employee (Dibble, 1999). Employees within knowledge-intensive organisation are more likely to voluntarily leave (Forrier & Sels, 2003). This makes it important for organisations to avoid such impact as much as possible. To gain insight into motivations of these employees, the motivations of these employees were explained within sub-question two.
Conclusion
In conclusion, knowledge-intensive organisations rely on tacit knowledge held by highly skilled individuals. Coding this knowledge, and managing it through strategic knowledge management, are intensive and costly investments that do not necessarily offer positive results. Undesirable staff turnover with resource-based knowledge directly causes a worse competitive position in knowledge-intensive organisations.
