Tan, Jui Aik (2023) A process model of knowledge-wealth creation: The processes of knowledge creation and strategy innovation among successful Malaysian chinese entrepreneurs from zhuāng zǐ’s perspective. PhD thesis, UTAR.
Abstract
This exploratory, process-oriented, constructivist, theory-building multiplecase study investigates how successful Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs create and use knowledge in strategy-making to generate new wealth consistently in organizations by leveraging on the teachings of Zhuāng Zǐ’s philosophy. Knowledge underpins dynamic managerial capabilities that are arguably needed to be more effective in making new strategies for creating wealth. In the search for the origin of firm performance, dynamic managerial capabilities literature finds that knowledge is a source of differences of firm strategies that lead to different firm performances. However, there is a lack of research on the process of creating knowledge underpinning the making of a new strategy for generating wealth effectively. Since the research gap emerges predominantly from the focus of Western literature on explicit knowledge, this constructivist research overcomes the shortcomings by drawing upon Zhuāng Zǐ’s philosophy on tacit knowledge and excellent skill development by individuals to construct a strategic knowledge creation framework to direct the investigation of the process of creating knowledge that underlies the making of a new strategy for generating wealth effectively. The main research objective is to fill the research gap by developing a process-oriented rather than variance-based conceptual model to reveal an underlying pattern of progressions of knowledge creating activities in the strategy-making that an entrepreneur undergoes. As dynamic managerial capabilities are entrepreneurial, this research observed the phenomenon of heterogeneity in an entrepreneur’s knowledge and its processes of creation that are linked to different strategy-making and wealth creation performance. The research outcome is important to add vital knowledge on the emergence of dynamic managerial capabilities and strategic change initiated by individual entrepreneurs. Using a process-oriented, constructivist theory-building multiple-case design, this research contrasted and identified commonalities among in-depth qualitative data collected from four specially selected Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs are the four cases chosen in accordance to the theory-building multiple-case design, which develop the grounded theory with data from cases. The entrepreneurs were selected as they were influenced by Zhuāng Zǐ’s philosophy that exists within the Chinese culture in developing their personal competencies in order to generate financial wealth. The constructivist approach is applied so that Zhuāng Zǐ’s philosophy can be used in uncovering and interpreting the process of creating rather than discovering knowledge in the strategy-making by individual entrepreneurs. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with four Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs to collect primary data. Secondary data was collected from multiple sources, such as annual report, autobiography and news reported by mass media. The data analysis was on-going and intertwined with data collection until a theoretical saturation was achieved. Data analysis was administered by means of analyzing within-case data, looking for cross-case patterns, comparing the emergent concepts with the existing literature and Zhuāng Zǐ’s philosophy, and contrasting the emergent concepts with the strategic knowledge creation framework. Open coding, axial coding and selective coding are applied to build a new conceptual model. As a result, this research proposes a process model of knowledge-wealth creation in which the processes took place. The process model refined the strategic knowledge creation framework and increased the understanding on Zhuāng Zǐ’s philosophy. This research also introduces “great knowledge” as a new concept in the context of strategic management, extends Zhuāng Zǐ’s philosophy to the dynamic managerial capabilities field and contemporary context. As an actionable knowledge for practitioners, the process model of knowledge-wealth creation offers guidance on a way of moving from generating the novel know-how towards making a living. Overall, this constructivist, theory-building multiple-case study achieved the research objective by proposing a new process model that showed that the process of creating knowledge underpinning the making of a new strategy for generating wealth effectively involves a four-stage process. The four-stage process consists of the empowerment of an entrepreneur’s natural ability to know, selfcultivation for possibility development, enactments of breakthrough, and survival and growth. The four-stage process involves an entrepreneur increasing his self-knowledge to identify and develop his natural ability to know, so that he becomes effective in creating great knowledge for the transformation of critical events into opportunities and application in forming innovative strategies, and to make him motivated to generate wealth consistently to attain the meaning of work.
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