Knowledge Creation and Firm Performance: The Role of Process Integration in Collaborative Relationships

In the increasingly competitive global marketplace, firms seek to maximize competitive advantage by collaborating with other firms in business-to-business (B2B) networks rather than competing as independent entities (Dyer and Singh 1998). Sharing unique knowledge is a central component of collaborative relationships (Vargo and Lusch 2004), resulting in the creation of new knowledge resources (Kahn et al. 2006). The successful exchange of knowledge resources between collaborating entities requires the integration of relevant processes (Teece et al. 2007), which can occur internally between functional units of the firm (Closs and Savitskie 2003) and externally between network partners (Richey et al. 2010).