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Knowledge and its management and, more recently, strategic knowledge management (SKM) represent major challenges for the organisations of the 21st century. Despite the importance of this knowledge field, and the significant quantity of research that has focussed on this theme, there is a dearth of studies in the literature undertaking a systematic SKM review. This study aims to provide a currently complete and systematic SKM review to stimulate and contribute to furthering this academic field and correspondingly set out an agenda for future research.

This paper sourced the data from the science citation index expanded (SCI-expanded), the social sciences citation index (SSCI) and the arts and humanities citation index (A&H CI) databases. This research spanned references published in journals belonging to the categories of management, business and economics without any chronological filter. The search returned a total of 99 references with their dates of publication between 1995 (1 reference) and 2018 (7 references).

The results included the identification of three core approaches to this study field: SKM models and competitive advantage, SKM implementation and the Systematic SKM approach.

This current study seeks to undertake the mapping of the scientific publications, the intellectual structure and research trends in the SKM field to: identify the fundamental contributions to the SKM research field; determine the research pathways establishing its intellectual structure and the scientific journals with the greatest impact on the field and identify the SKM research field geographical distribution and its collaborative structure.

This study defines a roadmap for an informed research agenda that proposes multiple directions: the usage and development of an innovative theory that may open new paths for future research and theoretical construction; a more sophisticated understanding of the concept and its applicability; approaching the shortcomings interrelated with the content across different levels of analysis; and the application of relevant and appropriate methodologies for operationalizing SKM.

Organizations and their members operate in increasingly complex, dynamic and even disruptive environments, with risk and uncertainty being major challenges. To that effect, data, information, knowledge, and respective competences are increasingly instrumental in enabling and sustaining organizational intelligence that translates into resilience in the shorter and sustainable excellence in the longer term. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the artifacts and routines in a sustainable organizational excellence context.

An extensive literature review was used to develop the context of the paper, focusing on big data and organizational intelligence for enterprise excellence and resilience. In addition, a thematic literature review method was used to study the role and impacts of routines and artifacts in organizational change, policies, structure and performance.

Although many traditional management practices retain their validity, knowledge management must give a clearer view of the existing connection between firm-level competitive advantage in open economies flows and difficult-to-use knowledge assets. The proposed framework studies knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation as organizational phenomena opposed and mutually incompatible.

The paper presents a first attempt to study the linkages of organizational routines and artifacts as a cycle wherein knowledge acquisition and learning competencies form and enhance a firm’s organizational intelligence, leading to robust competitiveness and sustainable entrepreneurship.

Building on the resource- and knowledge-based views, this paper aims to explore how coopetition affects radical innovation and the roles of knowledge structure and external knowledge integration in the relationship between coopetition and radical innovation.

This study proposes a research model to examine the mediating role of external knowledge integration on the coopetition-radical innovation link, where the mediation is moderated by the firm’s knowledge structure (including component knowledge and architectural knowledge). The authors use regression and bootstrapping to test the proposed model with survey data from 241 Chinese technology firms.

This study finds that coopetition positively affects radical innovation and the effect is fully mediated by external knowledge integration. Additionally, component knowledge negatively moderates the coopetition-external knowledge integration link and architectural knowledge positively moderates this relationship. Further, the mediating effect of external knowledge integration is also moderated by component knowledge and architectural knowledge.

Firms should engage in coopetition to promote radical innovation. Further, it is necessary for firms to appropriately manage coopetition according to their internal knowledge structure.

This study explains why scholars have different ideas about the relationship between coopetition and radical innovation by exploring the mediating role of external knowledge integration and the moderating effect of knowledge structure. Firms possess increased possibilities for knowledge leakage and partner opportunism with high levels of component knowledge, which will reduce the positive effect coopetition on external knowledge integration; thus, they are less likely to realize radical innovation. Instead, firms possess increased opportunities for resource sharing with high levels of architectural knowledge, thus improving the positive effect coopetition on external knowledge integration and they are more likely to achieve radical innovation.

This study aims to shed light on the internal and external antecedents of open innovation (OI) in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with a special focus on the role of knowledge management (KM) capability. The paper develops and tests an integrative research model which assesses the effect of internal factors on KM capability; the impact of organizational and external factors, namely, KM capability and environmental dynamism, on OI; and whether environmental dynamism moderates the relationship between KM capability and OI.

Drawing on the knowledge-based view and the social exchange and the contingency theories, this paper develops an integrative research model which analyzes several relations between organizational antecedents of KM capability and its effect on OI by using covariance-based structural equation modeling on a data set of Spanish SMEs.

Results confirm that information technology-supported operations and commitment-based human resource practices have a positive and significant influence on KM capability. In contrast, results do not find support for the relationship between interdepartmental connectedness and KM capability, whereas both KM capability and environmental dynamism have a direct influence on OI.

This paper adds to existing research on OI, as it is the first study that addresses the critical role of KM capability for the implementation of OI.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how multinational enterprises (MNEs) manage human resources (HR) in explorative and exploitative alliances in smart city projects (SCPs).

In this paper, the authors adopt an explorative and qualitative approach based on multiple case studies thanks to the interviews with 21 smart city managers of MNEs who are deeply involved in SCPs.

The authors found that MNEs use many different partnerships and “temporal separation” in many cities all around the world in order to maximize the benefits of both exploration and exploitation. According to the aim of the project, MNEs implemented different HR practices intentionally targeted toward managing social relations among internal and external employees involved in SCPs.

The authors highlighted that MNEs tend to develop different ties among employees and external partners and to use different HR practices according to the nature and to the aim of the alliances. Thus, the development of human resource management systems becomes crucial in supporting organizational ambidexterity through alliances.

This paper gives useful insights in improving the effectiveness of MNEs in SCPs. Due to the business opportunities arising from the application of ICT and technological innovation to urban services, MNEs are becoming an important player in smart cities. Increasing the effectiveness of the SCPs leads faster to more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable cities.

The development of alliances has a key role in strengthening and complementing firms’ exploration and exploitation agendas in SCPs. Thus, this paper provides guidelines to MNEs in order to adapt HR practices and to rethink the role of HR within and across corporate boundaries in an emergent context of analysis.

This paper aims to provide a substantial overview of features and channels of knowledge and technology transfer in light of achieving impact from science and research.

The paper is conceptual with substantial desk research undertaken. A taxonomy of transfer channels is proved and levels of impact from STI proposed.

It is found that there are different levels of value generated from science, technology and innovation, each featuring different stakeholders with different agendas and expectations. It is argued that to make knowledge and technology transfer impactful and sustainable, a long-term and holistic view and approach is required.

Against most papers about technology and knowledge transfer, this work presents an overarching overview of objects, channels and features of partners involved in transfer. It is features technology and knowledge transfer from a holistic perspective and provides useful background for future empiric studies and impact assessments.