Kang, S. J., Kessels, J., Lee, E. S., & Cho, Y. S. (2014). The development and its validation of knowledge productivity and value creation. Journal of CEO and Management Studies, 17(3), 23–43.
Knowledge productivity and value creation have changed and progressed significantly in our fast-changing knowledge economy during recent decades, presenting important challenges for managing businesses. Especially, knowledge productivity became the main factor for value creation, which is a priority objective of managing businesses. The purpose of this study is to develop and validate scales for the measurement of knowledge productivity and value creation. First, as a preliminary investigation, we conducted in-depth interviews with 39 executives and senior managers to develop the items for a questionnaire. Second, we conducted formal in-depth group interviews with 72 interviewees and collected completed questionnaires from 387 study participants. To test the convergent validity of the questionnaire items, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis using this sample. The results for the scale measuring knowledge productivity showed that 28 items could be categorized into two factors (KP1: improvement and innovation of products, services, and work processes, and KP2: sustainable development of the future growth engine). The results for the scale measuring value creation also indicated that all 28 items could be categorized into four factors (VC1: corporate reputation, image, and corporate social responsibility, VC2: employee satisfaction with work environment, VC3: employee satisfaction with Financial benefits, and VC4: sustainability). The reliability of the measurement instruments, containing two factors related to knowledge productivity and four factors related to value creation, was acceptable. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis to verify the discriminant validity of the instrument items indicated that the two-factor model for knowledge productivity and the four-factor model for knowledge productivity fitted the data significantly better than other altemative models for both measures. Finally, as an additional test, the results of the correlation analysis for both knowledge productivity and value creation proved the validity of our study variables for measurement purposes. The results of these validation tests support the usefulness and practicality of these variables for future research.