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Organizations are required to act in the best of their abilities in the face of competition resulting from globalization and other market factors (Ashurst & Doherty, 2003). To respond to the constraints of the new business environment, the successful organizations developed three major strategies (Gomes & Romão, 2012): (1) Training employees in the use of Information Systems/IT (IS/IT) to provide organizations of knowledge and responsiveness to answer the pressures to change. (2) Choosing for collaborative platforms involving all relevant stakeholders (customers, suppliers, and employees) in the business process. (3) Finding ways of obtaining superior performance using the frameworks to assist management processes. The inability to realize the “real” value from IS/IT investments lies mainly in the lack of alignment between the business and the strategies for IS/IT (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1999).
Strategic alignment positively influences Information Technology (IT) effectiveness (Porter, 1987; Galliers, 1991), leading to greater business profitability (Luftman, 1996). From the perspective of IS/IT, the problems of non-alignment with the business strategy typically result in reactive postures against IS/IT technologies being seen as a cost center and not as a strategic “business partner”. From the business point of view, the non-alignment of IS/IT result in a decreasing income arising from investments in technology and a reduction of competitive capabilities for the organization (Tallon, Kraemer, & Gurbaxani, 2000). With the shift to a new business environment with great predominance of intangible assets such as knowledge and innovation, organizations are required to manage environments of great complexity, mobility and uncertainty (Voelpel et al., 2006).
Knowledge management becomes an important key driver of organizational performance and a critical tool for organization survival, competitiveness and profitability (Omotayo, 2015). The increasing emphasis on intellectual capital is essential for a proper development of innovative products, distribution, and to improve the market value of the organization (Bose and Thomas, 2007). The impact of market structure on firm performance has been the subject of considerable discussion and debate in strategic management (Porter & Siggelkow, 2008). For many companies, the competitive advantage is seen as a continuous process of performance improvement, looking for best practices and enhancing new capabilities, gaining a return-on-investment (ROI) above the industry average (Porter, 1985) or an implementation of an effective strategy not simultaneously used by current or future competitors Barney (1991).
Scholars have extended Resource Based-View (RBV) to dynamic markets (Teece et al., 1997). The rationale is that RBV has not adequately explained how and why certain firms have competitive advantage in situations of rapid and unpredictable change. The search for new products or services and for more efficiently processes and procedures developing the dynamic capabilities to quickly respond to the external challenges and effectively continuous changes, adapting to new industrial trends (Teece et al., 1997). Sustainable competitive advantage depends on the construction and operation of a set of “core competencies” (Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). For managers, the challenge is to identify, develop, protect and provide resources and capabilities in a way that gives the organization a future competitive advantage and, thus, a higher return on capital (Amit & Schoemaker, 1993).