The Knowledge Management Strategic Alignment Model (KMSAM) and Its Impact on Performance: An Empirical Examination 25 The Knowledge Management Strategic Alignment Model (KMSAM) and Its Impact on Performance: An Empirical Examination

Recently, firms have started to realize the importance of the information technology (IT) for effective KM activities (Alavi & Leidner, 2001) or interorganizational learning facilitating (Scott, 2000). It is found that the high coalignment quality of KM and IT (i.e., their high-high fit) achieved high KM performance and satisfaction than those whose quality fitted low (Sher & Lee, 2004). More specifically, effective KM project alone can’t lead to success without the support of IT (Kim, 2001; Sabherwal & Sabherwal, 2005); IT alone also can do nothing without good KM initiatives (Kim, 2001) in attaining KM success thus leads to organizational performance (Bhatt & Grover, 2005). Accordingly, the strategic alignment between KM and IT with other resources or strategies must be considered for business performance (Asoh, 2004). However, their high-high fit doesn’t always yield positive organizational outcomes since enough exceptions are found to indicate that business strategy and knowledge strategy (e.g., Asoh, 2004), as well as human resource management strategy (e.g., Shih & Chiang, 2005) are interdependent. It has been realized that research regarding the integrated investigation of various strategies is not sufficient. Furthermore, the analysis and design of the organization as a whole is critical to achieve efficient organizational benefits. In the practical terms, the basic alignment mechanism is “strategy”, and it is though that a match between strategy and organization is the key driven to effectiveness at realizing intended strategies. Therefore, this study focused on three types of strategies discussed above that are critical to business in today’s knowledge-based organizations, namely knowledge management (KM) strategy, information technology (IT) strategy, and human resource management (HRM) strategy. We posit that performance constructs including growth and profitability are affected by strategic alignment bilaterally among these strategies. 3