Innovating strategically in information and knowledge management: Applications of organizational behavior theory

• The implementation of a top down strategy naming five academic fields for becoming a leading business school in Europe.
• Organizational behavior (OB) as the theoretical platform for Information and Knowledge Management.
• Among business schools we found no similar strategy and OB does not serve as a concrete platform for research.
• Top down strategy is problematic in knowledge organizations, since innovation occurs among faculty, not among top managers.
• Innovation theory key to renewal in information and Knowledge Management and we forward an integrated innovation framework.

A business school declares its strategy as becoming a leading European institution. As main vehicle for achieving recognition is the implementation of a top-down strategy naming five academic fields as key – (a) finance, (b) economics, (c) marketing, (d) law, accounting, and auditing, and (e) organizational behavior (OB). Top management allocates resources for research, academic activities, and positions to these five strategically chosen areas. Academic areas that are not strategically named must generate their own income through educational programs and research grants. Can OB serve as the platform to ensure the survival of IS/KMS? In our analysis, we found no other business school formulating a strategy along these lines; dominating strategic themes are internationalization, research excellence, and student environment. No academic field is singled out as strategic. We argue that selecting a few academic areas as a strategy is dysfunctional. We also found that OB is not very actively employed in research, be it positioning, theory, research model, analysis, or discussion. Hence, we do not find that OB offers any theorizing help to IS/KMS – this in contrast to innovation and change theories, for which we propose an framework as a means of defining IS/KMS research projects.