Knowledge Management and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Service Industry in Nigeria: An Interacting Effect of Innovation

Abstract

Organizations exist to compete for resources, customers, market shares and space, profit margins among other things in the ever so dynamic business environment. In achieving this, their strength lies in their unique, inimitable, intangible knowledge. This is the objective of this study, “knowledge management and sustainable competitive advantage in the service industry in Nigeria: an interacting effect of innovation. All of MTN Nigeria’s Matori, Lagos office employees served as the study’s population, and researchers used a cross-sectional survey approach (242. Questionnaire was developed in a 5-point scale and administered, 205 were returned and 193 (80%) was utilized for analysis. Simple percentage, mean, standard deviation, correlation coefficient and hierarchical regression analysis were adopted for analysing data retrieved on SPSS 25 due to the presence of the interacting effect of innovation. The results showed a statistically significant positive relationship between KM and SCA (r=0.474, p<0.01), KM has a positive significant effect on SCA (R2=0.453, p 0.000<0.05, Fobserved 186.796). the result of the interacting effect on innovation on both variables KM and SCA returned a partial correlation result of 0.295 (29.5%) indicating that innovation has an interacting influence of 29.5% both ways in ensuring that an organization through its KM practices attains the level of SCA it desires with a with a high tolerance and low multicollinearity of 0.592. The study recommends ensuring an enabling environment that allows knowledge management practices and innovativeness to thrive as this will ultimately lead organizations to attain sustainable competitive advantage over its rivals.