Knowledge Management Practices in Nonprofit Organizations: Evidence From Human Service Sector

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of external sources of knowledge and internal knowledge integration mechanisms in predicting opportunity exploration-which is the number of business opportunities that firms have successfully achieved. Most of the current research on a resource-based view of the firm and innovation highlights the critical role of external knowledge sources (i.e. customers, research institutions and group membership) in the recognition of strategic opportunities and in service innovations. Also, a number of scholars recognizes the important role of integration mechanisms working within the company as substantial factors in affecting organizational learning and the success of firms. In this study, therefore, by combining these two perspectives (i.e. external and internal), we investigate the impact of external sources and internal mechanisms in affecting opportunity exploitation for a specific form of organization, that is, the social cooperative: a specific type of non-profit organization, operating in the human services sector in Italy. A questionnaire was designed and administered online to representatives (N=1,500) of social cooperatives (SCs) in North-Central Italy. This first wave of data gathering resulted in 57 usable questionnaires. The analysis of data was carried out using descriptive statistics and regression analysis. The results obtained from this prior study support our hypothesis, demonstrating that external knowledge sources play a positive and significant role in affecting opportunity exploitation. In particular, two of the selected external knowledge sources were proved to affect the outcome variable in a positive and significant way; these are: group membership and clients and customers. Also, knowledge integration mechanisms were found to affect, in a positive and significant way, opportunity exploitation, thereby supporting our hypothesis. Despite the number of limits on this analysis (e.g. the small number of respondents, and the common method and source bias), the evidence may be of interest to both scholars and practitioners operating in this sector (where knowledge management practices for exploitation of opportunities have been scarcely explored until now) in order to appropriately manage these resources.