Antecedents and Consequences of Codification-Personalization Strategy: An Investigation of MSC-Status Companies in Malaysia

The landmark article by Hansen, Nohria and Tierney alerts companies against adopting a dual emphasis on the strategies of codification and personalization. This research investigates whether companies can adopt a hybrid strategy by straddling both codification and personalization without affecting organizational performance. Based on a survey of 219 MSC-status companies in Malaysia, the research determined that organizational culture, leadership and organizational structure do not contribute to codification-personalization strategy. Statistically, the strength of organizational culture and the degree of transactional leadership are highly correlated; the extent of organic structure and the strength of organizational culture are moderately correlated; and the degree of transactional leadership and the extent of organic structure are uncorrelated. While level of codification does not contribute to organizational performance, a strong organizational culture and a high degree of transactional leadership contribute positively to organizational performance, whereas the extent of organic structure is insignificant in predicting organizational performance. There is no statistical evidence to show that the further a company progresses along the knowledge life-cycle, the higher the level of codification; nor does firm size contribute to level of codification. However, knowledge life-cycle and firm size are highly correlated with each other. The level of codification differs significantly across the six sectors of MSC-status companies. There is a difference in the choice of codification-personalization strategy between local- and foreign-owned companies, whereby the level of codification for local-owned companies is significantly higher than foreign-owned companies. Companies adopting a hybrid strategy have higher organizational performance than companies adopting either a codification or a personalization strategy, but the difference is not statistically significant. The low Cronbach’s alpha for local-owned companies indicates the absence of knowledge management strategy among Malaysian companies. In this light, the alignment of knowledge management strategy with business strategy is proposed for further study.