Linking unlearningwith service quality through learning processes in the Spanish banking industry☆

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Relational knowledge Service firms Quality of service Banking Knowledge, like other resources, can quickly become obsolete. Thus, actors in an economy must constantly update their knowledge to keep pace with ongoing changes in their operational environment. This study explores unlearning's influence on two forms of learning (i.e., exploration and exploitation of knowledge). The study also adopts a dynamic management focus to analyze the influence of these two individual learning capabilities and their ability to help firms align technology knowledge and relational knowledge. This study reaches important conclusions on unlearning's role in knowledge management. The study examines learning processes and knowledge stocks (i.e., technology and relational knowledge) that practitioners (managers) within service firms generate through their relationships with customers. This study explores how an unlearning context can help service firms align learning processes (i.e., exploration and exploitation) through an empirical study of 150 managers in the Spanish banking industry. The strategic management literature defines absorptive capacity (ACAP) as a firm's " ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate, and apply that information to commercial ends " (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). Kim (1998) defines absorptive capacity as the learning ability and problem-solving skills that enable firms to assimilate knowledge and create new knowledge. Absorptive capacity is a function of the organization's existing resources, existing tacit and explicit knowledge, internal routines, management competences, and culture (Gray, 2006). Absorptive capacity results from a prolonged process of knowledge accumulation in conjunction with a strong ability to recognize and appreciate new valuable knowledge to produce more innovations. Some scholars use the idea of knowledge assimilation or creation to characterize how prior knowledge may pave the way for future opportunities (Shane, 2000). Thus, knowledge creation and learning processes map out a path toward assimilating and deploying knowledge (Short, Ketchen, Shook, & Ireland, 2009). Consequently, these learning processes have a close relation with Zahra and George's (2002) notion of ACAP, and more specifically, to the realized absorptive capacity dimension (RACAP). RACAP refers to a firm's capacity to develop and refine the routines that facilitate the combining of existing knowledge and newly acquired and assimilated knowledge (Zahra & George, 2002). An exploitation capability supplements this transformation capability in RACAP. The exploitation capability refers to a firm's capacity to deploy the newly acquired knowledge in products or services. Doing so helps firms to improve their product/service …