Creation of Managerial Capabilities through Managerial Knowledge Integration: A Competence-based Perspective

Introduction. During the last few decades, the field of strategic management seems to have lost its emphasis on management. Although different scholars (e.g. Coff 1997; Pennings, Lee, and van Witteloostuijn 1998; Pfeffer 1998) have emphasized human capital as being of strategic importance to firm behavior and performance, the field has largely failed to recognize management capability per se as a more specific human asset (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1993; Donaldson 1995; Hilmer and Donaldson 1996). The resource-based view of the firm (e.g. Grant 1991; Wernerfelt 1984) also largely neglects to address thoroughly the role of managers in the competitive equation. The loss of emphasis on management has brought on "a silent, ongoing battle between weak signals from the realm of management practice and strong, well-developed paradigms in established fields of scholarly inquiry" (Prahalad 1995: p. iii). Mahoney and Sanchez (1997) have addressed this issue by proposing an interactive, reciprocating process model to reconnect the domains and theories of strategic management practice and research. Thus, at least within the competence-based view, we now see a return to explicitly considering the role of management itself in organizational competence.

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