This essay explains the resource based view of competitiveness amid

organizational knowledge for value creation. It highlights the need for

organizations to create, share and utilize knowledge in today’s
turbulent business environment by stressing the importance of having
a focused view of resources and organizational capabilities that can be
used to identify areas which the organization can concentrate its efforts
to maintain a competitive edge. A need for continued leaning and
investment in technology for knowledge management is described in
detail emphasizing some of the techniques that organizations are using
to maintain competitive advantage such as knowledge retention
techniques to ensure that there is no loss of knowledge in organization
that can negatively impact its capabilities through using an inefficient
knowledge resource that does not allow continued learning and re-
learning.

2.0 Definitions, Knowledge and Resource Based View of

Competitiveness

Organizations today operate in a multi-dimensional environment which

they should effectively interact with. This effective interaction fosters
organizational change that maintains a competitive advantage and
keeps up with changes in the external environment. There are main
factors affecting and interacting with an organization both internally
and externally that can positively or negatively influence change and
ensure an organization maintains or creates competitive advantage or
not. Basically, most organizations have to manage resources and
materials flowing into the organization. One such important resource is
knowledge and depending on how it is created, shared, managed and
utilized by an organization it can become a source for competitive
advantage. In an article titled ‘Exploring the Relevance of Case Study
Research’ knowledge was defined in this manner:
Knowledge is viewed as something which can be deduced from
careful processes of hypothesizing, variable identification and
measurement within experimental designs, resulting in the
identification of causality and predictions being made about
 ‘facts’ which have been properly evaluated by mathematical
logic. (Dasgupta, 2015, p.147)

Management of knowledge therefore is key because it is a means by

which an organization can know the external environmental forces and
internal forces that have a direct or indirect impact on productivity,
employee motivation, resources and materials planning, strategy
formulation, goal setting and implementation, management strategy
and style, operations, leadership structures, conflict management, and
its culture. All this is important because it determines what an
organization does and is good at or otherwise known as its capabilities.
Capabilities determine the value that an organization creates and
comprises its systems, processes, organization and knowledge, skills
and behaviors to determine its outputs. Capabilities are where
organizations derive value from and effective knowledge creation,
sharing and utilization gives them an edge to have a resource based
view of competitive advantage. The multi-dimensional environment in
which organizations now operate means that organizations operate in a
global setting and are quickly and easily affected by global economic
developments which have steered a change in the manner in which
organizations seek to add value, thereby moving away from Michael
Porter’s approach as illustrated by Gerald & Clyde (2008, p.138) which
focuses on monopolies and barriers to entry. Porter’s model focuses on
resources and capabilities to create monopolies and uses resources
under an organizations control to generate gain. Expansion of this value
is in turn achieved by its capabilities. This view is refined and enhanced
by a resource based view that looks at unique combination of resources
to create value change and obtain more experience. The resource based
view therefore ensure that an organization becomes more responsive to
rapid external environmental changes because it uses internal
knowledge to create market opportunities from its capabilities while
Porter’s view of resource and capabilities only focus all resources on a
particular opportunity because an organization is centered on being the
best and ensuring that no other competitor obtains that advantage. This
approach is risky in that an organization waits for opportunities and
focus all resources on that one resource rather than create its own
opportunities from analyzing what it is good at. A resource based view
shields an organization from exposing itself to more than tolerable risk
because if one opportunity does not work, it still has other resources
that it can use elsewhere. Therefore, organizations that use knowledge
to manage their capabilities better manage risk and are able to endure
different competitive threats in the environment (Jamie, William, Pedro
and Marisabel, 2010 p. 947).

To maintain a competitive advantage in a resource based view, an

organization needs to ensure it creates value and knowledge that
becomes the core for strategy formulation and source for profitability.
The knowledge that an organization collects, shares and utilizes will
enable them identify elements such as scarce, durable, non-
transferable, and organization embedded relevant resources and
capabilities which can be used to a create competitive advantage.
Anchalee and Khwanruedee (2017) iterate this point when they state
that organizations need to exploit their capabilities to create knowledge
amongst its employees to promote knowledge sharing and use the
shared knowledge to create a sustainable competitive edge.
3.0 Organizational Knowledge
People in an organization have implied and explicit knowledge about
products, services, systems and processes. However, for this
knowledge to be considered organizational knowledge for competitive
advantage in a turbulent business environment, it needs to be created,
shared across the organization and utilized properly in order to
guarantee continued organizational survival. Dasgupta (2015) suggests
that knowledge involves understanding hypothetical scenarios and
predictability of future facts thereby showing that knowledge is not an
easy resource to manage but can be unique enough to generate
competitive advantage. This view is supported by Fang, Yang and Hsu
(2008) when they say that the characteristics of knowledge makes it a
source of competitive advantage and therefore the objective of
managerial attention. Thereby fostering innovation that ensures an
organization continues to meet and satisfy customer needs that have
become highly unpredictable and volatile to change. An organization
that creates value from its knowledge is therefore able to maintain and
most likely expand its customer base. Organizations today compete not
based on monopolistic tendencies but through superior customer
experiences that they can deliver using their unique resources and
organizational capabilities. This process stems from an organization
being able to create knowledge, share it and utilize it.

3.1 Knowledge Creation and Sharing

Knowledge creation involves the forming of new ideas for value
addition through interaction between tacit and explicit organizational
knowledge. Shongwe (2013 p. 626) agrees with this definition when he
states that knowledge creation is a value adding outcome or output of
a product, service or process. Modern day organizations are influenced
by varied external factors such as markets, suppliers, government and
political ideologies, regulators, customers, state of economy, global
trade, wealth distribution, and technological advancements that can all
cause turbulence in the external business environment prompting
organizations to implement strategies that capture both tacit and
explicit knowledge and converts it into organizational knowledge for
creation of unique capabilities which can be used to maintain a
competitive advantage and ultimately transform into profitability and
wealth creation. Similarly, internal changes such as separation of key
staff, redundancies, job re-engineering, new executive appointments,
ICT developments and acquisitions, re-designed production lines, and
enhanced marketing strategies can all impact information creation.
Modern day organizations hence need mechanisms that ensure that tacit
information which tends to be personal in nature can be obtained and
passed own to others. This is a very difficult type of information to
decipher because it is mental knowledge and not stored on any
organization database or information management system. Human
relations therefore becomes key in formulating mechanisms that ensure
proper systems are in place that allow knowledge creation as a basis for
learning and use this learning to create opportunities that give an
organization a competitive edge. Organizations have in turn responded
by implementing strategy that assures continued learning and sharing
of information through recognizing that they have become information
hubs and the different kind of information they collect and process into
knowledge has varied characteristics that create peculiar barriers which
need to be managed in order to ensure effective knowledge governance
mechanisms for sustainable competitive advantage (Fang, Yang, and
Hsu, 2013).

Technology has significantly aided information and resource

management such that organizations are using it to create knowledge.
One thriving technology being used to collect tacit knowledge is social
networking. This tool has enabled the flow and cyclical ease of
communication of knowledge by linking tacit and explicit knowledge.
Technological advances have ensured the ease of use of organizational
knowledge and sharing of it. Organizations today use Wikis, blogs,
crowdsourcing, organizational e-libraries, repositories, and discussions
to foster continued learning for purposes of knowledge creation and
sharing. The form in which this information is retained is equally key
because it assures an organization that its employees are all adequately
informed and possess the right competencies that allow them to
efficiently and effectively produce desired outputs and outcomes.
Human relations management ensures that knowledge is retained
through workshops, information libraries, training and job rotations
Organizations therefore need to be at a place where they are
continuously learning, unlearning and re-learning so that they are better
able to adapt to change, develop unique competences to maintain a
competitive advantage. Further, organizations need to ensure that
executive and senior management have adequate and relevant business
know-how that ensures that certain organizational knowledge is shared
and accessible to those that should have it. It is important to manage
how knowledge is shared in an organization more so that certain, if not
all, organizations seek to acquire information about unique capabilities
of their competitors so as to have a competitive advantage over the
competition. Knowledge is easily leaked because it is fluid and
organizations have developed mechanisms that restrict information at
certain levels and have defined organization specific culture for sharing
knowledge. This culture is seen in an organizations language,
technology or structures or can be unseen in believe systems and values
for social networking, troubleshooting and working relations (Abdullah
and Saifi 2015). For instance, when I worked with Deloitte & Touche
Zambia in 2007, internal policy did not allow anyone in the position of
audit senior and above to take up employment with a client until after
three years. This was one of the ways in which the audit firm protected
organizational knowledge by ensuring that there was a time lag
between the potential of using the information for decision making. In
this regard, the speed at which information is communicated for
decision making can spell the agility of one organization having a
competitive edge over another. It is through sharing information that
an organization creates true value that can result in innovation. A
resource based view has therefore steered organizations to shift from
quantity based innovations to quality oriented innovations because
modern day customers are critical about quality such that some are
prepared to pay a premium price for it. Professor Noboru Konno in a
television interview, Vantage Point stated that Japanese success of the
70s was no longer working. The country was in a crisis and needed a
rethink of its innovation strategies such that focus was not on
innovation for quantity and growth but should be reformed to
innovation not for growth but quality so that Japan could look at the
problems it created in the past and focus on fixing those problems. The
professor emphasized the need to move from supply side innovation to
demand side innovation that uses social knowledge. This aligns with a
resource based view in that an organization uses the additional
knowledge it has learned about the external environment to create
opportunities or innovations that create value from the unique
identified resources and capabilities it possesses. This bottom up
approach ensures that an organization shifts to a research organization
for either developing new value adding innovations or improving upon
existing innovations. Organizations are achieving this by ensuring that
they invest in social capital and create high trust societies that believe
in the organizations unique qualities and brand which in today’s
business world plays a critical role in customer royalty and retention.
Information sharing and utilization can therefore provide an
organization with knowledge to better understand market segments in
various geographical environments.
4.0 The Role of Knowledge and Organizational learning
Knowledge plays many vital roles in an organization to ensure that it
remains resilient to the external turbulent business environment. This
is achieved through the use of knowledge to identify areas for
technological and scientific development which culminate from
international competition; the standardization of organizational norms
and culture across global markets in which an organization operates
(Smelser, 1991). This requires that an organization continues to own
knowledge and uses it to create ongoing value. Yingxin, Yanqiu and
Xiangyang (2013 p. 902) support that an organization should continue
to have knowledge in order to create goods and services. This
continuous flow of knowledge draws from the fact that organizations
should have systems and mechanisms to learn and unlearning so as to
ensure that redundant process and obsolete knowledge is discarded.
Yingxin et al. (2013) describe that obsolete knowledge prevents the
acquisition and creation of new knowledge. Organizations therefore
need to create a culture that allows a timely discard of obsolete
information and a timely assimilation of new external information. The
culture should also allow for prompt response to external
environments. The full cycle of organization learning in a resource
based view requires that an organization has a system for learning new
external and internal knowledge, unlearning obsolete knowledge and
relearning of new information. Yingxin et al. (2013) have described
this process as a dynamic knowledge management view that helps an
organization to maintain sustainable competitive advantage. This view
is supported by Gabriele and Micheal (2010, p. 205) when they suggest
that lifelong learning is key in leveraging intellectual knowledge that
leads to improved innovation, effectiveness and efficiency.

Advancement in technology have resulted in improved knowledge

management which has been accelerated by enormous improvements
in technology in the last 20 years. Such notable technological
improvements have been seen in enterprise resource planning systems,
warehouse and transportation management systems, customer and
vendor relationship management systems which have revolutionized
transaction processing amongst supply chain partnerships (William and
Pedro, 2015 p. 45-46).
5.0 Conclusion
In conclusion organizations in today’s global and multidimensional
environment cannot afford to ignore the external dynamic forces that
enable them to maintain a competitive edge, make profits for economic
sustainability, create wealth and improve productivity minus
cultivating a uniform organization wide culture that enables knowledge
creation, sharing and utilization of such knowledge for value creation
through innovation. The world has moved from the industrial
revolution that looked internally to generate resources to push a single
market opportunity. Such monopolistic tendencies have no place in
today’s information age where knowledge is easily accessible and can
be transferred and shared instantaneously. As such, modern day
organizations have realized that knowledge is key for competitive
advantage and with it they can identify areas of capabilities which they
are good in and distribute resources to segmented market opportunities
thereby managing their risk exposure within acceptable limits. The
need for quick useful information has therefore become critical by
calling on organizations to significantly invest in information
technology to ensure that there is continued learning, unlearning and
re-learning of knowledge for knowledge management. This ensures
that knowledge and its capabilities are effectively and efficiently
harnessed and culminate in resource based views to maintaining or
achieving competitive advantage because organizations recognize that
resources are scarce (i.e. finances, human capital, raw materials, and
knowledge) and should be properly managed to ensure value addition
that guarantees customer loyalty and brand strengthening amid reduced
production costs, identification of relevant research projects and
development and determination of channels and means of
advertisement. Organizations therefore need to have mechanisms that
ensure that organizational knowledge is created, shared across the
organization and is effectively used to create value and maintain a
competitive advantage through continued interaction of internal
knowledge management and the external environment so that
organizations can better react to turbulent external environmental
changes. Consequently, showing that knowledge is key to a resource
based view of competitive advantage because organizations are able to
create value from it.
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