Harnessing knowledge resources for increasing returns: scalable structuration at Infosys Technologies

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511618055.012

12 - Harnessing knowledge resources for increasing returns: scalable structuration at Infosys Technologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009

Raghu Garud ,

Arun Kumaraswamy and

Vallabh Sambamurthy

Edited by

Edward D. Hess and

Robert K. Kazanjian

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Raghu Garud: Affiliation:
New York University, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the Leonard Stern School of Business
Arun Kumaraswamy: Affiliation:
Singapore Management University, Visiting Associate Professor of Management at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business
Vallabh Sambamurthy: Affiliation:
Michigan State University, Eli Broad Professor of Information Technology at the Graduate School of Management
Edward D. Hess: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Robert K. Kazanjian: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta

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Summary

Practitioners and researchers increasingly view knowledge as being a strategic resource (Winter, 1987). With rapid advances being made in information-based technologies, we are witnessing nothing short of another industrial revolution – one in which artisans are “using their heads and not their hands” (Fortune, 1991). Echoing the sentiments of a growing number of scholars and practitioners, an article in Business Week (1992) suggested “competitive advantage no longer belongs to the biggest or those blessed with abundant natural resources or the most capital. In the global economy, knowledge is king.”

Although knowledge is now gaining the recognition that it rightfully deserves, it has always played a key role in the functioning of modern firms. Penrose's (1995) work is illustrative in this regard. She pointed out that a firm is a bundle of resources possessing only an unrealized potential to yield different services. Eventually, it is the firm's managerial capacity to identify and realize productive services from these resources that yields competitive advantage.

Since Penrose's time, a key shift has occurred in the nature of resources that firms harness. Specifically, a firm's productive resources are no longer inert but, instead, infused with knowledge. This shift has profound implications for processes associated with knowledge production and use. Arthur (1991), for instance, pointed out that knowledge-infused resources have properties that are different from traditional resources such as land, labor, and financial capital.

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Search for Organic Growth , pp. 211 - 243

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511618055.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2006

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