Interação Entre GC, CI e Inovação

Education and Information Technologies (2023) 28:9685–9708
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11563-x
Interaction between knowledge management, intellectual

capital and innovation in higher education institutions
Manuel Alejandro Ibarra‑Cisneros1 · Juan Benito Vela Reyna1 ·

Felipe Hernández‑Perlines2
Received: 18 May 2022 / Accepted: 28 December 2022 / Published online: 13 January 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023
Abstract
Higher education institutions are essential generators and disseminators of knowledge;
however, they must create conditions to lay the foundations supported by knowledge
enablers and manage knowledge efficiently. In addition, intellectual capital and
innovation are elements that help this process; if everything is correctly articulated, the
academic staff and institution will promote better performance. This article analyzes
how three knowledge enablers (leadership, culture, and organizational incentives)
influence the knowledge management process. In turn, this process encourages the
development of better intellectual capital and innovation in the teachers of Higher
Education Institutions. A survey applied to 434 academics made it possible to collect
information that, through structural equation models of partial least squares, allowed
validation of the proposed hypotheses. The study results indicate that organizational
culture and leadership significantly influence the knowledge management process.
In addition, this process significantly influences intellectual capital and innovation.
Finally, the vital link between the variables studied is demonstrated.
Keywords Knowledge Management · Intellectual Capital · Innovation · Enablers ·

HEIs
1 Introduction
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) contribute to generating and disseminating

knowledge for the benefit of society. In like manner, they are responsible for training
high-quality human capital and putting forward projects and research products
* Manuel Alejandro Ibarra‑Cisneros

[email protected]
1
Faculty of Administrative Sciences, Autonomous University of Baja California, Mexicali, Mexico
2
Department of Business Administration, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain
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9686 Education and Information Technologies (2023) 28:9685–9708
whose clients are firms and the public sector (Cricelli et al., 2018). To reach such
goals, knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC) are fundamental
to every institution (Bontis et al., 2007), without leaving innovation (I) aside.
Significant contributions to the state of art have been made regarding knowledge,
its management, and the benefits for organizations in general (Nonaka & Takeuchi,
1995). Likewise, research work has been carried out in the sphere of HEIs analyzing
KM and IC topics, either separately or jointly (De Matos et al., 2020, 2022;
Martin-Sardesai & Guthrie, 2018; Quarchioni et al., 2022; Ramírez Córcoles et al.,
2011; Rehman & Iqbal, 2020). Which has allowed the opening of a specific research
line to study HEIs; such a line helps understand the functioning and interaction of
KM, IC, and innovation.
Furthermore, HEIs must be aware that essential parts of their performance are
associated with the implementation degree of both KM and IC and I jointly. This
way, the better these elements are developed, HEIs have better the opportunities to
attract clients, improve relationships with the entire staff and produce new knowl-
edge, innovations, and patents, among other activities (Iacoviello et al., 2019;
Secundo et al., 2018). Therefore, it is crucial to understand how the development
of KM processes allows for improvement in the acquisition of IC and innovation
between the academics of public HEIs. In addition, Iqbal et al. (2019) introduce the
analysis of the construct KM enablers into the studied relations to explore which
enablers have a more significant influence on KM processes.
One of the objectives of the HEIs authorities is to achieve the excellence of its
students and raise the prestige measured through international rankings. To achieve
this, it is essential that every institution support and enrich knowledge manage-
ment processes, as well as strengthen the intellectual capital of its academics. Con-
sequently, the quality and speed of the processes to innovate internally increases.
However, like any organization, within the HEIs, some elements may or may not be
implemented effectively and are specific and unique to each institution. These ele-
ments are called enablers, which are numerous, but this research focuses on three of
them, leadership, organizational culture, and incentives.
Empirical evidence has mainly shown that KM, IC, and I individually experience
positive relationships. However, their simultaneous behavior and relationship with
the three critical enablers have not been thoroughly studied. Based on the above,
this research aims to analyze the interactions between KM, IC, and I and the role
of the KM enablers of the recognized public HEIs in Mexico. To do so, the follow-
ing questions are proposed: (i) Does the KM process depend on the correct imple-
mentation of KM enablers? (ii) Do KM process, Intellectual Capital, and Innovation
impact HEIs performance? (iii) Does IC positively influence the speed and quality
of Innovation activities?
To reach the goals, a survey based on the Iqbal et al. (2019) model was applied to
434 academicians from public HEIs accredited at a national level. The hypotheses
were verified by employing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-
SEM), which was applied to the software Adanco 2.1.1.
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Education and Information Technologies (2023) 28:9685–9708 9687
This paper contributes to enriching and supporting the empirical evidence devel-
oped so far on the critical role KM enablers have so that KM processes are car-
ried out successfully, which contributes to achieving the goals of HEIs. In addition,
two other elements are added to the analysis to propose a model that seeks to know
how interaction is carried out that benefits academics’ teaching, management, and
research capacities.
2 Theoretical framework and formulation of hypotheses
2.1 Knowledge management
The knowledge management studies are substantiated by the firm’s knowledge-based

theory and the resource-based view –RBV–. Such developments aimed to explain
how knowledge must be managed to impact the organization, workers, and all the
actors it interacts with within its environment. There are well-defined research lines
with significant theoretical contributions regarding KM applied in the entrepreneur-
ial sector and education, as in the present case.
First, knowledge is the fundamental factor that individuals and organizations use
to generate all sorts of goods and services and satisfy needs; moreover, it is a source
of competitivity. In this sense, knowledge must integrate into the organization via
routines, documents, systems, and organizational culture (Fernández-Lopez et al.,
2018). Knowledge is classified as explicit and tacit. The former is deemed measurable
and is transcribed in books, databases, articles, and all manner of documents; while
the latter is acquired through the experience and intuition of each individual; therefore,
it is more challenging to communicate to others –in the sphere of HEIs, university staff
is the addition of explicit and tacit knowledge (Ramírez & Gordillo, 2014).
On the other hand, various definitions by KM have enriched state of the art on
this topic. Andersen (1999) stated that KM is the addition of all the knowledge
of an organization’s members, which is systematized and used to improve the
organization. Therefore, organizations must be capable of recognizing and
administrating the competencies they have (Wen Chong et al., 2000). For their
part, Dzenopoljac et al. (2018) defined KM as “the systemic management of all
the activities and processes -generation, codification, storage, transference and
utilization of knowledge- of the organization and a competitive advantage is
attained” (p. 79). According to this definition, KM comprises several stages
which, if developed jointly, will allow acquiring a series of advantages for the
entire organization to generate productivity, efficiency, cost reduction, and better
organization performance (Metha & Tariq, 2020; Davenport, 1994) stated that
KM divides into three stages, namely: acquisition, sharing, and use of knowledge.
Later, Duhon (1998) divided KM into five stages: identifying, acquiring, assessing,
retrieving, and sharing information and, by doing so, generating knowledge. While
for Sadeghi Boroujerdi et al. (2019), KM meant acquiring, creating, storing,
sharing, and applying knowledge.
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Regardless of the differences in the stages, all the definitions concur that to obtain
KM, it is at least necessary to acquire, store, share and use knowledge. A series of
principles, practices, and techniques are necessary. It is also necessary to measure
the support processes and the employees’ cognitive capability to identify the ben-
efits produced by KM (Chawla & Joshi, 2011). In the sphere of HEIs, Davenport &
Hansen (1999) defined KM as the “organized and systematic process of producing
and disseminating information, selecting, distilling and unfolding explicit and tacit
knowledge to create a single value that can be utilized to strengthen the teaching-
learning environment” (p. 99).
HEIs use their KM to foster a competitive advantage (Barley et al., 2018;
Mubarak & Sabraz Nawaz, 2019) over the rest of the institutions. Moreover, KM
allows for optimizing the knowledge generated and operating efficiently in the
knowledge society. Davenport and Hansen (1999) argued that for HEIs to maximize
their KM, they must have a culture that promotes knowledge creation. They also
have to acknowledge their strengths, use information technologies correctly, keep
good relationships with the environment, generate and share new knowledge, be
open to changes and resort to KM techniques.
The first KM stage is the acquisition, which comprises searching, identifying,
gathering, and mapping knowledge (Pinho et al., 2012), which can be obtained from
internal or external sources (Obeidat et al., 2016). In the case of HEIs, these sources
are the government, the entrepreneurial sector, graduates, NGOs, other HEIs, and
society. It has to be underscored that this is not a process that can be planned or
controlled. Moreover, it may be acquired or created by the organization itself (Dze-
nopoljac et al., 2018); this way, the firms that invest in R&D produce their knowl-
edge. However, this process is expensive and complicated to develop, and because
of this, not all HEIs can undertake it efficiently. Codification and storage consist in
codifying and classifying knowledge and storing it to be utilized by the right people
(Dzenopoljac et al., 2018). Knowledge is stored in databases, documents, processes,
and systems. Knowledge Sharing (KS) is the process of disseminating knowledge
among all the members of an organization. KS turns organizational knowledge into
individual or group knowledge when internalization and socialization occur (Wang
et al., 2014). For its part, knowledge use is applied to the organization’s functions to
carry out activities that may have direct results, such as products, services, proce-
dures, and regulations, as well as generate value for the organizations (Dzenopoljac
et al., 2018).
2.2 KM enablers
According to Rivera and Rivera (2016), KM enablers are defined as “the set of
organizational, cultural and diverse elements that exist in the organization which
supports and facilitate the processes of creation, storage, transference and applica-
tion of knowledge” (p. 24). This is to say, they are elements that, if correctly applied,
allow KM to unfold and not remain only as acquired knowledge; therefore, enablers
contribute to the growth of the km process (Sahibzada et al., 2020a, b).
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There are various enablers that organizations utilize; among the most dis-
tinguished there are organizational culture, leadership, and incentives of the
organization.
As regards organizational culture (OC), it is supported by the organization’s
mission and vision (Wen Chong et al., 2000), and also by the way the processes
and managerial practices are devised and carried out; as well as the attitudes and
values of the organization (Adeinat & Abdulfatah, 2019), the beliefs that compose
their identity such as performance criteria, assessment of the staff and motivation
(Mubarak & Sabraz Nawaz, 2019). Likewise, it is essential to mention that the
organizational culture encourages knowledge creation (Thani & Mirkamali, 2018).
In the case of HEIs, the problem with organizational culture is that members con-
sider knowledge as their individual property; thereby, they do not want to share it
with the rest of the institution or external parties (Mubarak & Sabraz Nawaz, 2019).
Organizational incentives (OI) are rewards received by the members of an organiza-
tion owing to their activities, either bonuses, recognitions, or awards, among others.
Incentives make sharing knowledge among organization members easy and allow
reinforcing such behavior (Cho & Korte, 2014). In the education sphere, incen-
tives promote collaborative work between academics as it is a way to obtain benefits
–promotions, prestige– (Cheng et al., 2009); HEIs members are further motivated
by personal incentives (Bercovitz & Feldmann, 2006). For its part, leadership (LS)
“implies a leader’s capability to align KM behaviors with organizational strategies,
promote KM values, communicate the best strategies and provide assessment met-
rics to measure the impacts of knowledge” (Mubarak & Sabraz Nawaz, 2019, p.
192). In the education sector, leadership enables academics to help reach new goals
utilizing applying organizational strategies. In this sense, Shariq et al. (2019) agree
with leadership’s importance in achieving KM processes’ development. Finally, it is
essential to highlight that organizational culture and leadership are two of the most
used facilitators in the academic literature.
2.3 Intellectual capital
IC is composed of all an organization’s intangible assets, including relations

between all the organizational resources (Dias Jordão & Casas Novas, 2017). In
the case of HEIs, Ramírez and Gordillo (2014) stated that IC refers to the institu-
tions’ non-tangible or non-physical assets such as the processes, innovation capac-
ity, patents, their members’ tacit knowledge, abilities, talents, society recognitions,
networks of collaborators, among others. These indicators are directly linked with
HEI’s development and growth (Pedro et al., 2019). According to Cricelli et al.
(2018), in an institution, the professors’ and researchers’ IC comprises the abilities
and competencies to teach and research; in point of fact, there was a positive rela-
tionship between the docent’s IC and the students’ labor training (Sultanova et al.,
2018). Likewise, they expressed that administrative staff transforms tacit knowl-
edge into explicit and integrates it into the institution’s structure, while students
take the professors’ knowledge to society and vice versa. Furthermore, it is worth
underscoring that IC in universities varies in function of their proper profile; this is
13
to say, they are oriented to research, teaching, or entrepreneurism (Secundo et al.,

2016).
IC is usually divided into three dimensions –human capital (HC), structural capi-
tal (SC), and relational capital (RC)–. Human capital is the set of explicit and tacit
knowledge of the HEIs staff acquired through formal and informal education pro-
cesses (Bontis et al., 2007). It is a collective capacity and capability to extract the
best outcomes from the knowledge of the individuals (Qurashi et al., 2020). Follow-
ing Secundo et al. (2016), HC is composed of the “intangibles found in individual
competencies such as the expertise and knowledge of the professors, researchers,
students and in general of everyone working for an institution” (p. 422). HC becomes
especially relevant as it carries out the essential teaching, researching, and manage-
ment duties; its responsibility is to train excellent human resources, the reason why
its competencies must be ascertained to increase them (Demuner et al., 2016). Fur-
thermore, HC is strongly associated with KM (Supapawawisit et al., 2018).
For its part, structural capital is defined as explicit knowledge related to the inter-
nal process of dissemination, communication, and management of scientific and
technical knowledge in the organization (Bontis et al., 2007; Booker et al., 2008; De
Frutos-Belizón et al., 2019; Leitner et al., 2014; Secundo et al., 2016) pointed out
that SC “comprises the resources in the organization itself, namely: databases, pro-
cedures, manuals, intellectual property, research projects and infrastructure, pro-
cesses and routines, values, ethics of the organization members, university culture
and team philosophy” (p. 422). It is also necessary to include scientific and techno-
logical knowledge management, bibliographic repositories, and internal dissemina-
tion processes (Ramírez & Gordillo, 2014).
Relational capital is the set of economic, political, and institutional relations
developed and maintained by universities (Leitner et al., 2014). RC incorporates the
lessons from its members’ internal interactions and the links with the socioeconomic
environment producing a benefit for both parties (Demuner et al., 2016). Therefore,
RC contributes to disseminating knowledge gained by professors, researchers, and
students (Paoloni et al., 2019). As regards the relations kept by universities, these
are maintained with entrepreneurs, governments, non-governmental organizations,
business chambers, graduates, and various authorities (Ramírez et al., 2012), which
is vital to be made known online, so that the actions of the HEIs have a greater reach
to all stakeholders (Ramírez & Tejada, 2019).
2.4 Innovation
Innovation may be understood as introducing improvements in the organizations’

processes (Damanpour et al., 2009); it also comprises all the procedures, processes,
practices, technologies, and services set up to meet the client’s demands (Rezaei &
Moghanlo, 2015). Every organization has the opportunity to innovate, though this
will depend on its internal capabilities, technologies, and know-how to develop its
knowledge (Tether, 2003). This way, the organizations that innovate are those that
convince themselves and effectively harness their abilities and strengths. In the edu-
cation sector, innovation takes place through the improvement of its processes, the
13
generation of new competencies taught to the students, and responsiveness to face

the contingencies and challenges that may appear.
Innovation speed (IS) is defined by Iqbal et al. (2019) as the capability to intro-
duce new academic programs, learning methods, and know-how to face challenges
in a complex and turbulent environment. In this regard, it is necessary to consider
that innovative HEIs are pioneers in developing science, culture, academia, and
management and are followed by other HEIs. On the other hand, innovation quality
(IQ) is defined as the ability to offer innovative educational services that are bet-
ter than the competitors’ (Iqbal et al., 2019). In this sense, quality must be supple-
mented with speed, as it is the first and better in offering educational, management,
and research services.
Raj Adhikar (2010) argued that in the current dynamical world, successful HEIs
are those who continuously produce new knowledge and widely disseminate it over
their systems, and this takes place because of their high position in innovation at
national and international levels. Therefore, it is essential to emphasize that innova-
tion in HEIs must be part of their DNA; it has to be in their organizational culture,
and all the professors, researchers, administrative staff, and students must participate
in it (Lin, 2007).
2.5 KM enablers and KM process
KM enablers are critical elements within organizations so that knowledge-related

activities are carried out efficiently (Ferasso & Grenier, 2021). The KM process
comprises different KM stages; KM processes are defined as the activities carried
out so that the members of an organization can produce, store, share and use knowl-
edge (Rivera & Rivera, 2016; Sahibzada et al., 2022). These activities are addressed
through internal or external processes (Torres et al., 2018).
Empirical evidence has been shown (Cho & Korte, 2014; Iqbal, 2021; Iqbal et al.,
2019; Obeidat et al., 2016; Raudeliūnienė & Kordab, 2019; Sahibzada et al., 2020a,
b; Veer Ramjeawon & Rowley, 2020) how KM enablers facilitate the performance
of the KM process. By these enablers, each KM stage will proceed correctly and in
the correct order. In the case of HEIs, the optimal development of KM processes is
carried out through organizational culture, innovation, and leadership, which allow
academics to be motivated to develop KM within a culture oriented towards generat-
ing and transmitting knowledge.
According to Donate and Sánchez de Pablo (2015), leadership allows the devel-
opment of channels and initiatives to carry out the best KM practices, so leadership
style, motivation, and communication are fundamental. Likewise, intelligent leader-
ship increases the interaction opportunities of the members of an organization (Ding
et al., 2019).
As Haider et al. (2022) pointed out, in higher education institutions, leadership
is transcendental for Department Heads and Deans since responsible leadership fos-
ters communication and constructive relationships between staff. In addition, a posi-
tive social climate is generated, and knowledge sharing is inspired. Therefore, to the
extent that there is positive leadership in HEIs, the process of managing knowledge
13
among all institution members is facilitated, which results in better conditions to

innovate, learn, interact with the environment, and increase the productivity of staff
and the institution at a global level.
For its part, culture is a critical enabler that allows knowledge to be shared within
the organization (Al-Kurdi et al., 2018). Therefore, if there is a culture that promotes
knowledge sharing among academics, it will be possible for the KM process to be car-
ried out optimally. Thus achieving and encouraging innovation and productivity by all
academics. However, it is essential to note that the cultural context varies from country
to country. Therefore, expecting the same behavior within HEIs in different countries is
impossible. This is shown by international evidence (Ardichvili et al., 2006).
However, it is also important to mention that “the competitive nature of academia
and the need for an ongoing publication to be considered employable are factors
inhibiting the sharing of knowledge among academics within HEIs” (Al-Kurdi et al.,
2018, p. 234). Therefore, it is necessary to investigate if the conditions exist for KM
to be developed.
In this manner, the following research hypotheses were proposed:
H1: KM enabler organizational culture positively influences the KM process.

H2: KM enabler organizational incentive positively influences KM process.
H3: KM enabler leadership positively influences the KM process.
2.6 KM process and innovation
Innovation cannot generate itself; knowledge must be acquired, shared, and used so
that it is transformed and later disseminated in new educational programs or admin-
istrative and academic processes. This way, the KM process influences the innova-
tion of processes in HEIs. To accomplish this, it is necessary that the KM process
articulates with the institution members, and they introduce improvements inside it
to later work with the entrepreneurial sector. Evidence positively relating the KM
process and organizational innovation has been found (Agostini et al., 2017; Ling &
Nasurdin, 2010; Teixeira et al., 2018). Likewise, Ling and Nasurdin (2010) pointed
out that the dimensions of knowledge management are considered the core driving
power of administrative innovation.
This research is intended to verify the generated evidence but focuses on the edu-
cation sector, where KM processes influence both the quality and speed of organiza-
tional innovations. This means that better implementation of KM processes results
in higher quality and speed innovation. Innovation in the HEIs translate into a better
educational offer, better services for its clients, new lines of research, and new ways
of satisfying needs and contributing to science, technology, and society. This will
make it possible to attract more clients, investigate contracts, improve society’s rep-
utation, and be better positioned in the international rankings of universities. Thus,
hypothesis four is stated:
H4: KM process positively influences innovation.
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2.7 KM process and intellectual capital
The evidence produced by studies (Hayaeian et al., 2022; Pflugfelder, 2021; Wang
et al., 2016) verified the existence of a close relationship between KM and IC.
According to Dias Jordão and Casas Novas (2017), KM was the drive for the growth
and development of IC. Additionally, KM enables organizations to define strategies
to produce IC. That is to say, for HEIs to apply IC efficiently, it is necessary first
to develop KM processes, which for their part, are preceded by KM enablers. This
statement is supported by Cabrilo and Dahms (2018) by indicating that the configu-
ration of IC in organizations must be well understood before setting up KM pro-
cesses. Analyzing the above, the hypothesis is:
H5: KM process positively impacts intellectual capital activities.
2.8 Intellectual capital and innovation
In recent years, significant evidence has been generated that supports a close rela-
tionship between IC and product, service, and organizational innovation. (Akil et al.,
2021; Allameh, 2018; Alshamsi et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2021; Waseem et al., 2018;
Wendra et al., 2019). As Allameh (2018) pointed out, innovation requires powerful
stimuli that can produce innovative results by putting the right people together with
the right intellectual culture. In this way, innovation is the product of well-prepared
and consolidated intellectual capital; therefore, as the IC is encouraged by the HEIs,
innovation will increase, improving educational quality, positioning universities on a
national and global scale, and allowing society to meet expectations. Therefore, it is
proposed as a hypothesis:
H6: There is a positive and significant relationship between Intellectual capital

and HEIs Innovation.
3 Methodology
3.1 Sample and data collection
The population under study was the full-time professors and researchers in public
higher education institutes recognized by education authorities. According to Secre-
taría de Educación Pública, [Secretariat of Public Education] (2018), there are 7,442
universities in Mexico, where about 4000,000 professors work; but only 94,717 full-
time professors were the objects of study. Therefore, a sample of 434 surveys to
apply was decided with a margin of error of 4.2% and a confidence level of 95%.
The sample consisted of 52% men and 48% women, the average age of the profes-
sors was 42 years, 52% had a doctorate, and the rest had a master’s degree. Likewise,
86% obtained their last degree of studies in a national institution and the rest abroad,
37% have a seniority of up to 10 years, another equal percentage between 11 and 20
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Table 1 Pearson’s correlation Construct KM enablers KM process IC Innovation

indices between the variables of
the model KM Enablers 1 0.877** 0.805** 0.697**
KM Process 0.877** 1 0.865** 0.744**
IC 0.805** 0.865** 1 0.809**
Innovation 0.697** 0.744** 0.809** 1
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
Table 2 Powers reached in each correlation of the model

Construct Correlation ρ H1 Α err prob Sample size Power (1-β
achieved err prob)
KM Process ---> KM Enablers 0.877** 0.02 434 1

KM Process ---> IC 0.865** 0.02 434 1
KM Process ---> Innovation 0.744** 0.02 434 1
IC ---> Innovation 0.809** 0.02 434 1
years, and 8% are over 30 years of antiquity. On average, professors taught 12 h of

class per week at the undergraduate or graduate level; 86% were full-time professors,
and the rest were researchers.
To verify that the achieved sample of 434 teachers surveyed complies with the
reliability parameters that justify its analysis, the power level achieved through
the Gpower program (Faul et al., 2009) was verified. For this, as a first step, Pear-
son’s correlation values were determined between the KM process and KM ena-
bles (KMp-KMe), reaching an index of 0.8.77. The second correlation generated
was the KM process, with CI obtaining 0.805, the third correlation between the
KM process and innovation with 0.744, and the correlation between IC and Inno-
vation reached 0.809 (Table 1).
As a next step, the power was calculated with the above data, as presented in
the previous table. With the help of the G*power software, the established criteria
were a bivariate correlation test of a standard two-tailed model and considering a
type of analysis in post hoc mode, having already applied 434 surveys (Table 2).
Finally, with a demanding value of α = 0.02 (2%), which is equivalent to being
wrong 2 out of 100 opportunities for each of the cases, a power of 100% con-
fidence was obtained in each of the analyzed correlations, clearly above > 0.80
minimum acceptable (Kline, 2015). This means that the applied sample is reliable
for further analysis.
The survey was provided by (Iqbal et al., 2019), who researched the relationship
between the same variables, but in Pakistan, which was built from contributions by
(Huang & Li, 2009; Wang & Wang, 2012). In addition, the instrument was adapted
for the case of Mexico, with a total of 71 items; the –original survey has 62 items-,
divided into five sections.
The data-gathering process consisted of the identification of all the accred-
ited Mexican HEIs; then, the websites of such institutions were visited in order to
13
collect the most significant possible number of email addresses of professors that
engage in teaching, management, and research. Finally, the instrument was applied
using an internet survey; after sending more than 1,500 emails, in the end, 434 were
validated.
In order to verify that the use of internet surveys did not generate common biases
that could have distorted the results. Harman’s test was performed to check if any
factor largely explains the variation in the data. In this case, the result was 46.37,
which indicates that the data is adequately associated with the different constructs
analyzed (Tehseen et al., 2017).
It is essential to point out that Mexican universities have three profiles of profes-
sors. The full-time oriented mainly to teaching; those of full time oriented mainly
to investigation (they are accredited before the National System of Researchers by
the National Council for Science and Technology. That is to say; they are profes-
sors who, in addition to carrying out all the activities of a professor with teaching-
oriented and administrative management tasks, have official research tasks of 20 h
per week with complementary remuneration); and partial time subject professors.
The latter are professionals with a high level of experience in the private or public
sector who are hired to teach certain subjects. These professors are valuable since
they transmit what the productive sector is doing in practice. Therefore, their experi-
ence allows them to have another vision of the methodological or theoretical aspects
taught by professors and researchers. However, for this research, they could not be
considered because there are no public records to access to interview them; although
some universities may have information about their contribution, there is no data
that this research has been able to access.
Therefore, it was decided to consider only full-time professors, who mainly carry
out academic activities (teaching classes as a priority, although they also carry
out consulting, tutoring, design of educational plans, accreditations, and research,
among other inherent activities); or the research-oriented professor as the main pro-
file. Without neglecting the other activities mentioned, this type of professor has
priorities in a different hierarchical order than the one oriented to the academy (pub-
lication of articles in prestigious international and national journals, patents, funded
research projects, design of public policies, sectoral, thesis directions, teaching
classes, scientific popularization mainly).
3.2 Measurement
The model proposed is composed of four constructs (Fig. 1). First, KM enablers were
divided into three dimensions (first-order construct): Leadership (LS) with five items,
which measure the actions of KM fostered by school authorities –for example, there
is an established vision for KM in the institution; The Institutional Development plan
focuses on KM; the authority of the institution recognizes that knowledge assets can add
value; the authority of the institution shows commitment to initiatives to promote KM-.
Organizational culture (OC) with five items that measured how OC enables developing
actions aimed to improve KM –for example, communication of success stories is widely
encouraged within the university; knowledge does not threaten university positions; the
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Fig. 1 Proposed model
university aligns rewards and recognition with knowledge activities; there is a culture of
openness and trust; the university encourages empowerment and participation in deci-
sion-making-. Organizational incentives (OI) with five items that analyzed if HEIs set up
systems in order to support professors to accomplish the organization’s goals –for exam-
ple, the acquisition of knowledge, the exchange and the use of these are rewarded with a
higher salary; or a higher bonus; or with a promotion-.
The KM process is a second-order construct that comprises three dimen-
sions: knowledge acquisition (KA) with six items to find out if HEIs have defined
mechanisms to acquire the knowledge which later will be used –For example, the
institution offers an open environment for scholars to acquire new knowledge;
the institution actively observes and adopts best practices in the education sec-
tor; Information relevant to our activities is continuously collected; knowledge is
obtained from different sources: academics, business people and society-. Knowl-
edge Sharing (KS) with six items that measured the existence of mechanisms
to ensure that knowledge is shared by actors both inside and outside the insti-
tution, -example: information and knowledge necessary for the tasks are shared
academic; knowledge is exchanged between academics and authorities to achieve
goals with little time and effort; information systems such as intranet and elec-
tronic bulletin boards are developed to share information and knowledge; knowl-
edge is shared between managers and academics-. Knowledge use (KU) with
six items as well, which measured if HEIs use knowledge to improve their ser-
vices, –example: the university effectively manages different sources and types of
knowledge; the university uses the available knowledge to improve the services
provided to its clients; the university applies the available knowledge to improve
its performance-.
13
Intellectual capital is a second-order construct composed of 21 items divided

into three dimensions; the first one is HC, which analyzes if HEIs incentivize the
development of competencies and abilities of professors and also boost creativity
and exchange of ideas (Secundo et al., 2016), -example: employees have adequate
work experience to carry out their work successfully in our university; the university
offers well-designed training programs; employees of our university often develop
new ideas and knowledge-. For its part, SC identified the tools to manage the infor-
mation in the institution.- For example, our university responds to changes very
quickly; our university has an easily accessible information system; our university’s
systems and procedures support innovation-. RC allowed finding out which external
actors HEIs have relations with –for example, our university maintains appropriate
interactions with its interest groups; or long-term relationships with the community;
our university has many excellent providers-.
The construct Innovation (second order) was divided into Innovation Speed
(IS) and Quality (IQ), both with five items. The first measured the speed of HEIs
to devise and launch new programs, solve problems and generate improvement
processes (Iqbal et al., 2019). The second, for its part, was focused on finding out
if academicians deem innovations in their HEIs better than those of competence
(Rezaei & Moghanlo, 2015).
Response type. All items were designed as 5 points on a Likert scale, where
1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree. Therefore, they were responses on an
ordinal scale that allowed the respondent to have greater freedom to generate his
response based on his perception of his actions in his institution.
4 Results
The results were analyzed in two stages: the measuring and structural models.
4.1 Measuring model
In this second stage, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM)
employing statistical software ADANCO 2.1.1 (Henseler & Dijkstra, 2015). This
technique was considered the most suitable owing to the use of non-normal data in
structures of complex models (Ringle et al., 2018).
The results of the measuring model indicated that all the analysis constructs
were reliable as they have values over the minimum established (Table 3). For
example, in the case of Dijkstra-Henseler’s (ρΑ), all the constructs have values over
0.700 (Henseler et al., 2015); and the same case for composite reliability (ρc) (For-
nell & Larcker, 1981), as well as for Cronbach’s alpha (Hair et al., 2014).
The analysis of factorial loads indicates that the items belonging to each con-
struct must have a minimum load of 0.707 to be considered part of such constructs
(Carmines & Zeller, 1979). In this stage, 36 items met this parameter (Table 4).
13
Table 3 Construct reliability Construct Mean SD (ρA) (ρc) (α)
KME OC 3.40 0.90 0.848 0.929 0.848

KME OI 3.06 1.15 0.906 0.934 0.906
KME LS 3.63 1.00 0.925 0.943 0.924
KM process 3.40 0.96 0.944 0.953 0.944
Intellectual capital 3.42 0.88 0.977 0.980 0.977
Innovation 3.22 1.06 0.937 0.949 0.937
Another indicator analyzed was Average Variance Extracted (AVE), which

defines the variation of a construct regarding its items; in any case, such value must
be superior to 0.50, according to Fornell and Larcker (1981). In this case, all the
constructs were located over 0.700 (Table 5). In the same table, discriminant valid-
ity was also analyzed, which states that a construct shares more variation with its
indicators than another (Hair et al., 2014). In this case, it is noticed that all the con-
structs met this indication since the values in the diagonal of the matrix are above
the values before them in each column.
Another discriminant validity measure, the Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio of Cor-
relations (HTMT), was included in the analysis. This indicator defines that when a
model is correctly fitted, its values must be under 0.90 (Gold et al., 2001). Table 6
shows that all the values were below this parameter; thereby, it is considered that the
model fit is correct.
4.2 Structural model analysis
The third stage to obtain results consisted in generating the structural model, for
which a collinearity analysis of the constructs was run as a first approximation to
the final results. Again, the non-existence of collinearity was demonstrated, as the
values ranged from 1 to 10.
The following step was to ascertain the determination coefficients (R²) of the
dimensions KM enablers, KM process, IC, and I. These dimensions resulted from
previously analyzed constructs; a type A second-order model A analysis was utilized
to verify the research hypotheses.
All the constructs had a significant R²: KM process (0.754), Innovation (0.677),
and Intellectual Capital (0.716). According to Chin (1998), the predictability levels
of these coefficients were substantial for the KM process, IC, and I. This way, it is
considered that all the constructs have significant explanatory levels.
Finally, the direct effects of the analyzed dimensions were ascertained using the
same system to verify the research hypotheses. The t-values, p-values, and path
coefficients (β) were calculated using bootstrap resampling for 4,999 subsamples
(Table 7). It is noticed that all the relations presented positive values. The rela-
tions between KME organizational culture and KM process (β = 0.418, t = 8.584,
sig. = 0.000, p < 0.01); KME organizational incentives and KM process (β = 0.197,
13
Table 4 Factor loadings

Indicator LS OC OI KM process IC Innovation
LS1 0.8821
LS2 0.8984
LS3 0.8803
LS4 0.8973
LS5 0.8231
OC4 0.9317
OC5 0.9321
OI1 0.8929
OI2 0.9046
OI3 0.8829
OI4 0.8527
KA4 0.8183
KS1 0.8532
KS2 0.8584
KS4 0.8430
KS5 0.8473
KU2 0.8401
KU3 0.8627
KU4 0.8585
SC2 0.8381
SC4 0.8392
SC6 0.8654
SC7 0.8519
RC1 0.8787
RC2 0.8534
RC5 0.8404
IS1 0.8744
IS2 0.9011
IS3 0.9272
IS4 0.9175
IS5 0.9217
IQ1 0.9194
IQ2 0.9095
IQ3 0.9175
IQ4 0.9243
IQ5 0.9114
t = 5.561, sig. = 0.000, p < 0.01); and KME leadership and KM process (β = 0.377,
t = 8.864, sig. = 0.000, p < 0.01) presented a significant association that allows con-
firming H1, H2 and H3. For its part, the association between KM process and inno-
vation (β = 0.191, t = 3.310, sig. = 0.000, p < 0.01) was also considered significant
13
Table 5 Convergent and discriminant validity Fornell-Larcker criterion

Construct AVE OC OI LS KM process INNOVATION IC
KME OC 0.8685 0.8685

KME OI 0.7805 0.3448 0.7805
KME LS 0.7685 0.4791 0.3161 0.7685
KM process 0.7187 0.6313 0.4280 0.6037 0.719
INNOVATION 0.8327 0.3708 0.2917 0.4086 0.5557 0.8327
IC 0.7269 0.5348 0.3654 0.4903 0.7162 0.6671 0.7269
Table 6 Discriminant validity: Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio of Correlations (HTMT)

Construct OC OI LS KM process INNOVATION IC
KME OC
KME OI 0.6696
KME LS 0.7802 0.6135
KM process 0.8881 0.7065 0.8300
INNOVATION 0.6683 0.5730 0.6717 0.7743
IC 0.8198 0.6552 0.7514 0.8979 0.8523
Table 7 Model results (direct effects)

Hypothesis Effect (β) Se t-value p-value Cohen’s f2
H1 KME organizational culture -> KM 0.418 0.0487 8.584 0.000*** 0.3292

process
H2 KME organizational incentive -> KM 0.197 0.0354 5.561 0.000*** 0.0958
process
H3 KME leadership-> KM process 0.377 0.0425 8.864 0.000*** 0.2793
H4 KM process -> Innovation 0.191 0.0577 3.310 0.000*** 0.0322
H5 KM process -> Intellectual Capital 0.846 0.0156 54.298 0.000*** 2.5237
H6 Intellectual Capital -> Innovation 0.654 0.0540 12.129 0.000*** 0.3774
***: p < 0.01
but modest, even so, the statistics are positives, hence H4 is accepted. The relation-
ship between the KM process and IC (β = 0.846, t = 54.29, sig. = 0.000, p < 0.01)
was the highest of all the relations analyzed; therefore, H5 is also accepted. The
relation between IC and Innovation (β = 0.654, t = 12.12, sig. = 0.000, p < 0.01) pre-
sented a high and significant association, therefore H6 is accepted.
Finally, the size effects (Cohen f2); in two of the relations, there are large, other
two moderate, and two small, according to the parameters established by Cohen
(1988) –small-effect value: 0.02 ≤ and ≤ 0.15; moderate effects 0.15 ≤ and ≤ 0.35;
while large effects ≥ 0.35.
13
4.3 Discussion and conclusions
The results showed that all interactions between the constructs are favorable; this
is to say, all the hypotheses are accepted. However, it is necessary to analyze such
relations’ behavior thoroughly. The first hypothesis is H1: KM enabler organiza-
tional culture positively influences the KM process. The results agreed with Adeinat
and Abdulfatah (2019) and Ferasso and Grenier (2021) regarding the importance of
organizational culture in contributing to better knowledge management by profes-
sors. A culture that stimulates the generation and sharing of knowledge promotes a
healthy and stimulating environment to improve the various processes and objectives
of HEIs. The second hypothesis: H2: KM enabler organizational incentive positively
influences KM process. Although the result is similar to that obtained by Iqbal et al.
(2019), being positive, its small effect on the KM process translates into a low influ-
ence of the incentives towards a better KM process. An explanation for this result
suggests that teachers do not carry out their academic activities based on their per-
ceived incentives. On the contrary, the culture of generating and sharing knowledge
with students, organizations, and society is the primary source of motivation. This
is derived from the intrinsic commitment of professors to contribute to creating a
better society. For its part, H3: KM enabler leadership positively influences the KM
process. The evidence supports the results of Raudeliūnienė and Kordab (2019) and
Sahibzada et al. (2020a, b). In this regard, adequate leadership by the authorities of
the institutions facilitates the establishment of policies aimed at efficiently manag-
ing knowledge. Furthermore, a good leader makes it possible to support those inno-
vative projects that improve the performance indicators of the institutions, which
subsequently leads to greater recognition and prestige of both the institution and the
professors themselves.
The results support the importance of KM enablers for the KM process’s ade-
quate performance. In this sense, the incentives granted to academics, the organi-
zation’s culture, and leadership promote better knowledge management of HEIs.
Likewise, the results obtained by Obeidat et al. (2016) were confirmed. Analyzing
each of the three selected enablers, it was found that the organization’s culture and
leadership significantly influence knowledge management processes. H4: The KM
process positively influences innovation; it agrees with Damanpour et al. (2009) and
Iqbal et al. (2019), as there is a positive relationship between the KM process and
innovation. However, the degree of influence is marginal, so although the results are
positive, it is crucial to be cautious.
It is essential to mention that the HEI’s innovation processes directly result from
the knowledge captured, processed, and shared. Therefore, if this knowledge is bet-
ter managed, it will result in better innovation processes. Likewise, organizational
innovation can be increased through leadership and the strengthening of KM capa-
bilities (Ding et al., 2019).
For its part, H5: KM process positively impacts intellectual capital activities,
the findings of various authors (Hayaeian et al., 2022; Pflugfelder, 2021) on how
the KM process influences IC is verified. In this respect, the results corroborate
such studies since there are strong correlations between variables. Moreover,
both variables have been extensively analyzed, and the results corroborate the
13
importance of KM so that IC activities are developed well. Finally, H6: There

is a positive and significant relationship between Intellectual capital and HEIs
Innovation. It agrees with the results (Alshamsi et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2021;
Wendra et al., 2019) in that the IC encourages innovation activities, in this case,
among teachers of the HEIs. In this regard, a qualified and motivated human
capital; a well-planned and organized structural capital with clear administrative
policies; and a relational capital based on frequent contact with graduates, entre-
preneurs, communities, governments, and the rest of society, favor both the qual-
ity and the speed of the innovation processes are developed more quickly and
efficiently. Therefore, academic and research activities at HEIs provide results
that translate into patents, books, scientific articles, and consultancies to other
organizations.
It is essential to mention that KM practices can vary depending on the type of
sector (public or private), as well as the sociodemographic context (Pepple et al.,
2022); Therefore, these results cannot necessarily be extrapolated to the rest of
the HEIs in the rest of the world, where the activities of the teachers tend to vary.
It is concluded that HEIs need to develop KM processes from KM enablers,
especially the organizational culture and leadership of all central authorities and
institutes. With this, it is ensured that the knowledge is disseminated among all
the members of the HEIs, and later, said knowledge reaches the entire society.
Likewise, it is necessary to promote knowledge exchange between academics,
administrative staff, management, and students to avoid resistance to change and
individualism. At the same time, HEIs must identify their intellectual capital
and develop it based on KM processes, where rapid and quality innovation is the
result of both variables.
Finally, the prestige of an institution is the result of the excellent use of knowl-
edge management, intellectual capital, and innovation. Therefore, the contribu-
tion of all teachers is essential for achieving the objectives of all HEIs, regardless
of their status, profile, or employment status.
4.4 Contribution
This article presents the following contributions to KM’s state of the art in HEIs.
Firstly, it was demonstrated that enablers are the cornerstone of good KM-pro-
cess performance. In the literature, this relation is obviated; nevertheless, it is
not defined which enablers are more defining in the development of KM. Fur-
thermore, out of the three analyzed enablers, organizational culture had the most
weight, while incentives were the least. Additionally, it was shown that knowl-
edge management positively influences a better development of both intellectual
capital and innovation. Likewise, intellectual capital also contributes by improv-
ing the speed and quality of the innovation developed by full-time professors,
regardless of the profile of each one of them.
13
4.5 Limitations
The study’s main limitation is that it was only applied to full-time academics and
not to senior managers and decision-makers, who may have a different perception
of the topic. Unfortunately, the lack of information and databases of the personnel
of the institutions does not facilitate being able to deepen the investigation.
4.6 Implications for HEI
In higher education, knowledge is essential to generate competitive advantages.

Therefore, HEIs must know the implications of developing knowledge management
processes with intellectual capital and innovation. Therefore, to improve the perfor-
mance, prestige, and impact of HEIs, it is necessary to establish strategies, policies,
and culture to develop the above factors, in which all academic and administrative
staff actively participate.
4.7 Future lines of research
As a future line of research, it is proposed to study the three variables analyzed from
the perspective of the different disciplines within HEIs and their relationship with
their performance. In this case, the contribution by discipline is the same as the
institution’s overall performance? For example, do intellectual capital and knowl-
edge management impact the same proportion on performance according to the type
of discipline?
Data availability Data available on request from the authors.
Declarations
Competing interests The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
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Education and Information Technologies (2023) 28:9685–9708

Interaction between knowledge management, intellectual

Manuel Alejandro Ibarra‑Cisneros1 · Juan Benito Vela Reyna1 ·

Keywords Knowledge Management · Intellectual Capital · Innovation · Enablers ·

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) contribute to generating and disseminating

* Manuel Alejandro Ibarra‑Cisneros

2 Theoretical framework and formulation of hypotheses

The knowledge management studies are substantiated by the firm’s knowledge-based

IC is composed of all an organization’s intangible assets, including relations

to say, they are oriented to research, teaching, or entrepreneurism (Secundo et al.,

Innovation may be understood as introducing improvements in the organizations’

generation of new competencies taught to the students, and responsiveness to face

2.5 KM enablers and KM process

KM enablers are critical elements within organizations so that knowledge-related

among all institution members is facilitated, which results in better conditions to

H1: KM enabler organizational culture positively influences the KM process.

2.6 KM process and innovation

H4: KM process positively influences innovation.

2.7 KM process and intellectual capital

H5: KM process positively impacts intellectual capital activities.

2.8 Intellectual capital and innovation

H6: There is a positive and significant relationship between Intellectual capital

3.1 Sample and data collection

Table 1 Pearson’s correlation Construct KM enablers KM process IC Innovation

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

Table 2 Powers reached in each correlation of the model

KM Process ---> KM Enablers 0.877** 0.02 434 1

years, and 8% are over 30 years of antiquity. On average, professors taught 12 h of

Fig. 1 Proposed model

Intellectual capital is a second-order construct composed of 21 items divided

Table 3 Construct reliability Construct Mean SD (ρA) (ρc) (α)

KME OC 3.40 0.90 0.848 0.929 0.848

Another indicator analyzed was Average Variance Extracted (AVE), which

4.2 Structural model analysis

Table 4 Factor loadings

Table 5 Convergent and discriminant validity Fornell-Larcker criterion

KME OC 0.8685 0.8685

Table 6 Discriminant validity: Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio of Correlations (HTMT)

Table 7 Model results (direct effects)

H1 KME organizational culture -> KM 0.418 0.0487 8.584 0.000*** 0.3292

***: p < 0.01

4.3 Discussion and conclusions

importance of KM so that IC activities are developed well. Finally, H6: There

4.6 Implications for HEI

In higher education, knowledge is essential to generate competitive advantages.

4.7 Future lines of research

Data availability Data available on request from the authors.

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2 Theoretical framework and formulation of hypotheses

2.5 KM enablers and KM process

2.6 KM process and innovation

2.7 KM process and intellectual capital

2.8 Intellectual capital and innovation

3.1 Sample and data collection

4.2 Structural model analysis

4.3 Discussion and conclusions

4.6 Implications for HEI

4.7 Future lines of research