Knowledge strategic choices in implementing knowledge strategy: Case of Malaysian hotel industry - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 56

Particularly in these two issues, there is a stiff
competition in Malaysian hotel industry. This
assumption made has supported the previous
observation made Auzair (2011) where she con-
tended that hotel industry in Malaysia is believed
to be highly competitive. More specifically, in 2010
the number of hotel room supply is 105,849 (Eco-
nomic Cencus, 2011) (Ministry of Tourism Malay-
sia, 2012b). Business firm ought to develop best
strategies in sustaining competitive advantages
enabling attainment of superior business perform-
ance. One of the primary competitive tools is the
management of knowledge within the firm.
Knowledge Management (KM) is the best
answer to understand knowledge strategy (KS)
(Hallin, 2009; Zack, 1999). KS is still new concept
in the business environment, thus KM implemen-
tation is still very conservative and passive. (Cheng,
2010; Musulin, Gamulin & Crnojevac, 2011).
Therefore, this study proposed that the execution
of KS will guide Malaysian hotel industry to man-
age the valuable asset of knowledge.

knowledge within organizations. (Smith, McKeen
& Singh, 2010).
The main function of KM rests on the premise
to locate, organize, transfer, and leverage the
knowledge in the organization (e.g. Anderson,
2009; Civi, 2000; Lee, 2008). These function act as
the key to avoid reinventing the wheel and to lever-
age increasing organizational knowledge for more
well-defined and informed decision making (Ling,
Yih, Eze, Guan Gan & Ling, 2008). The appear-
ance of KM give an obvious answer to respond to
the what, when, where and how this assets must
exist in the organization. Aboud Zeid (2009) sup-
ported that KM must be the tool for managing the
knowledge in the organization. Though beneficial,
KM can be time consuming and temporary, where
knowledge goes through incremental change over
time (Sabherwal & Sabherwal, 2007). The imple-
mentation and execution of KS is affected by
issues relating to the conceptualization of KM
and the identification benefits associated with KM
(Abdollahi, Rezaeian & Mohseni, 2008; Asoh,
Belardo & Duchessi, 2008).

3 LITERATURE REVIEW AND

HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT

3.3 Knowledge strategy
The practice of KS in understanding the concept
of KM is widely ignored and received little atten-
tion in research (Mitch & Samson, 2007). KS is
the critical area of strategic choices for the firm,
where it guide business firm to implement KM
(Kasten, 2007). KS is a possible new method to
manage knowledge since it can bring benefit to
the firm when it comes to survive in highly com-
petition business environment (Denford & Chan,
2011). KS is defined as “a set of strategic actions
or choices made at high strategic level to identify
the strategic knowledge assets, resources and capa-
bilities and then orientating them toward achieving
the organizational goals and improving the organi-
zational performance” (Al-Ammary, 2008, p. 66).
Particularly in this definition, knowledge strategic
choices are essential to be determined first before
implementing KS. KS choices are the knowledge
activities that needs to be required by business firm
prior to implement KS (e.g. Al-Ammary, 2008;
Asoh, 2004; Chew, 2008; Zack, 1999). Table 1
summarized knowledge strategic choices that com-
monly found in business environment.
Implementation of strategic choices can be con-
ducted once the knowledge strategic choices have
been determined. Consequently, there are many
typology of KS has been developed by several
researchers. To determine KS in this study, knowl-
edge strategic choice must be determined first.
However, the balance of trade off must be speci-
fied first before selecting the suitable knowledge
strategic choice. The reason is that business firm

3.1 Knowledge based view
Researchers have called to refine the RBV to
include intangible resource as factors that affect
competitive advantage. (Sousa & Hendriks, 2006).

Knowledge can be defined as “ fluid mix of framed
experience, values, contextual information, and
expert insight that provides a framework for evalu-
ating and incorporating new experiences and infor-
mation. It originates and is applied in the minds of
knower. In organizations, it often becomes embed-
ded not only in documents or repositories but also
in organizational routines, processes, practices, and
norms ” (Davenport & Prusak, 2000, p. 4).

Knowledge is something difficult to be understood
and there are no universally accepted of knowledge
definition (Russ, Fineman & Jones, 2010).
Given that tangible assets such as land, capital
and labor are easily to be copied, business firms
have changed their mindset to recognize knowledge
as the main asset within the organization (Sadaghi-
yani & Tavallaee, 2011). However, there is still
unsolved problem regarding on how this knowledge
can be created and sustained in the organization
(Kiessling, Richey, Meng & Dabic, 2009). This has
led to a rise KM initiatives within organization.

3.2 Knowledge management
Knowledge management literature revolves around
the discussion on how to develop and sustain