Explaining knowledge intensive firms’ performance through internal factors: evidence from an IT consulting firm

Abstract

Our research contributes to knowledge-intensive firms research streams. We propose an explanation of their performance based on organizational design theory and the resource-based view. Through a case study on an IT consulting firm in France, we examined the impact of a coherent organizational architecture and a cognitive asset on the performance of the firm. The results show a complementarity between a coherent organizational design and a meticulously formed and maintained human resources asset to explain the performance of an IT consulting firm.