Working Paper: NBER ID: w10237
Authors: Elizabeth Kremp; Jacques Mairesse
Abstract: In modern knowledge driven economies, firms are increasingly aware that individual and collective knowledge is a major factor of economic performance. The larger the firms and the stronger their connection with technology intensive industries, the more are they likely to set up knowledge management (KM) policies, such as promoting a culture of information and knowledge sharing (C), motivating employees and executives to remain with the firm (R), forging alliances and partnerships for knowledge acquisition (A), implementing written knowledge management rules (W). The French 1998-2000 Community Innovation Survey (CIS3) has surveyed the use of these four knowledge management policies for a representative sample of manufacturing firms. The micro econometric analysis of the survey tends to confirm that knowledge management indeed contributes significantly to firm innovative performance and to its productivity. The impacts of adoption of the four surveyed KM practices on firm innovative and productivity performance are not completely accounted by firm size, industry, research & development (R&D) efforts or other factors, but persist to a sizeable extent after controlling for all these factors.
Keywords: Knowledge Management; Innovation; Productivity; Firm Level; French Manufacturing
JEL Codes: C35; L60; O31; O32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| culture of knowledge sharing (O36) | likelihood of firms innovating (O31) |
| culture of knowledge sharing (O36) | innovative performance (O35) |
| culture of knowledge sharing (O36) | incentive policies for employee retention (M52) |
| culture of knowledge sharing (O36) | alliances for knowledge acquisition (O36) |
| incentive policies for employee retention (M52) | likelihood of firms innovating (O31) |
| alliances for knowledge acquisition (O36) | likelihood of firms innovating (O31) |
| culture of knowledge sharing (O36) | innovation intensity (O31) |
| culture of knowledge sharing (O36) | propensity to patent (O34) |
| culture of knowledge sharing (O36) | patenting intensity (O34) |