The Impact of knowledge management on organizational innovation

ENEvery organization wants to create unique products and services, but not all organizations achieve this. Those that successfully offer exceptional products and services thanks to better execution processes can be called innovative organizations. However, the desire to be an innovative organization alone is not enough, organizations need to develop new processes in order to be successful and to properly manage the knowledge of the organization. This article analyzes the impact of knowledge management on organizational innovation, and presents the research conducted in Lithuania. Many researchers see a positive impact on organizational innovation, as knowledge management practices that prioritize the generation of new knowledge and learning at the organizational level are important for achieving positive results in innovation. Thus, knowledge generation has a positive correlation with organizational innovation creation, but some researchers, e.g. Donate and de Pablo (2015) consider this relationship to be indirect. The results of a study by Lee, Leon, Hew, and Ooi (2013) revealed that knowledge acquisition is not strongly related to an organization’s technology innovation process. Capon, Farley, Lehmann, and Hulbert (1992) argue that the acquisition of knowledge does not affect an organization’s ability to innovate. However, there are other studies, e.g. Darroc and McNaughton (2002) and Tan and Nasurdin (2011) argue that knowledge acquisition strongly influences the process of technological innovation. The aim of this article is to determine whether this impact is direct or indirect, not only to limit technological innovations, and to determine which trends are typical for Lithuanian organizations. [From the publication]