Knowledge Creation and Organizational Performance: Moderating and Mediating Processes from an Organizational Agility Perspective

Knowledge management systems (KMS) allow firms to create knowledge and improve organizational creativity to help them sustain a competitive advantage. However, we lack knowledge about the underlying mechanisms for how the different aspects of KMS-based knowledge-creation process (i.e., socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization) enhance organizational creativity and, ultimately, organizational performance. We examine organizational agility’s role as a mediator between knowledge creation and organizational creativity and the subsequent effect that creativity has on organizational performance. We also analyze the moderating roles of two key knowledge characteristics, tacitness and institutionalization, in the mediation processes. We found that organizational agility mediated the effect that knowledge creation had on organizational creativity. Moreover, knowledge tacitness moderated the effect that socialization had on organizational creativity. Knowledge institutionalization, on the other hand, moderated the effects that combination and internalization had on organizational creativity. Our findings extend prior research by providing insights into the role that knowledge creation and knowledge characteristics play in stimulating organizational creativity and firm performance. We discuss our study’s implications for practitioners and researchers.