Managerial knowledge underlying the process of strategic renewal

Understanding the intra-organizational processes that allow organizations to renew themselves in response to changing environmental demands is an important research issue. This paper contributes to the field’s understanding of this topic by examining the skills and know-how managers use to access and recombine existing market, technology and product knowledge into new knowledge. Synthesizing established theory on tacit knowledge in the context of the challenges posed by strategic renewal, the paper develops three sets of theoretical propositions that together provide a basis for defining competence in managerial practices and its relationship to firm-level strategic renewal. The paper’s intent is to provide a motivation and conceptual framework for future empirical research.