Minding the Cognition : Toward a Strategic Knowledge Management for Competitive Advantage

The knowledge base of an organization is considered its intellectual capital, and is increasingly emphasized as a vital source of competitive advantage. Engineering, managing, and leveraging knowledge (individual-, group-, and organizational-level knowledge) are becoming strategic activities in many organizations for achieving competitive advantage. In this context, building organizational capabilities to acquire, create, and disseminate knowledge on a continual basis has become a key challenge for strategy and organizational design experts. While the research and practice in this regard has focused extensively on Information Technology (IT) capabilities for building knowledge communities, the process dimension of learning, knowledge creation, and dissemination has received less attention. This paper articulates the need for cultivating the various learning as well as sociocognitive routines to create and leverage knowledge and suggests how this approach would help formulate better strategies and enhance employees' commitment. This article also highlights the importance of a dynamic approach to managing organizational cognition, a critical factor in organization survival. We further discuss the implications for strategic management and organization development practices