Knowledge Management Strategic Alignment in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

Abstract

Organizations today should actively incorporate knowledge strategy (KS) into their Business Strategy (BS) as knowledge has been recognized as a strategic element in the performance of the organization. Hence, the current research hypothesis that the alignment between BS and KS has a positive effect on the organizational performance. In an attempt to explore the alignment between KS and BS, an operational model is proposed based on the prior studies in the strategic alignment. BS types were viewed in terms of Miles and Snow's (1978) typology of Defenders, Analyzers and Prospectors. Two KS strategies include: Aggressive Knowledge Strategy (AKS) and Conservative Knowledge Strategy (CKS) were selected to examine the KM strategic alignment with business strategies. This model was empirically validated through a survey of 106 banks selected from the six Gulf countries (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Oman). With respect to the perspective of alignment, the moderation approach was chosen. The overall finding of the research demonstrated that there is a strong association between KS and BS and that the alignment between KS and BS clearly influenced the organizational performance.