An exploration of contemporary organizational artifacts and routines in a sustainable excellence context

Purpose Organizations and their members operate in increasingly complex, dynamic and even disruptive environments, with risk and uncertainty being major challenges. To that effect, data, information, knowledge, and respective competences are increasingly instrumental in enabling and sustaining organizational intelligence that translates into resilience in the shorter and sustainable excellence in the longer term. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the artifacts and routines in a sustainable organizational excellence context. Design/methodology/approach An extensive literature review was used to develop the context of the paper, focusing on big data and organizational intelligence for enterprise excellence and resilience. In addition, a thematic literature review method was used to study the role and impacts of routines and artifacts in organizational change, policies, structure and performance. Findings Although many traditional management practices retain their validity, knowledge management must give a clearer view of the existing connection between firm-level competitive advantage in open economies flows and difficult-to-use knowledge assets. The proposed framework studies knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation as organizational phenomena opposed and mutually incompatible. Originality/value The paper presents a first attempt to study the linkages of organizational routines and artifacts as a cycle wherein knowledge acquisition and learning competencies form and enhance a firm’s organizational intelligence, leading to robust competitiveness and sustainable entrepreneurship.