Assessing the relationship between business strategy and knowledge acquisition in Polish Manufacturing Enterprises

Companies that have achieved a certain level of knowledge growth are able to capitalize on the knowledge to improve their results (Tiwana, 2002). Enterprises can obtain their competitive advantages by acquiring useful knowledge. The knowledge acquisition process can take place both in the context of the internal relationships of the firms and of the external relationships with customers, suppliers, and competitors. Dyer and Singh (1998) suggested that external knowledge acquisition becomes critical for firms, and Nonaka (1994) formulated that this is important in value creation for firms. Moreover, Yli-Renko et al. (2001) stated, that external knowledge acquisition provides opportunities for creating new knowledge in firms. Due to the opinion that knowledge is a key strategic resource, enterprises strive to develop a maximum amount of knowledge in order to improve the success of their business strategy implementation (Drucker, 1993; Bhatt et al., 2005). This study adapted the concept of knowledge management to analyze which external knowledge acquired in a manufacturing company could contribute most to the achievement of the set strategic goals. Generally speaking, knowledge can be classified either as tacit or explicit knowledge, and information technology (IT) is essentially regarded as a natural medium for managing knowledge (Borghoff and Pareschi, 1997; Lev, 2009). External knowledge acquisition refers to the degree of obtaining both external explicit knowledge (such as work reports and