Cover
Volume 7, Special Issue 3 (2026)

Published: July 31, 2026

Pages: 156-169

Research articles

The relationship between IT capabilities and innovation capabilities by mediating role of knowledge management

Hayder A. Abdul Raheem 1
1Department of investment management and business economics, college of business economics, Al-Nahrain university, Baghdad, Iraq
History
  • Received: June 22, 2026
  • Revised: June 26, 2026
  • Accepted: June 28, 2026
  • Available Online: July 25, 2026
DOI

https://doi.org/10.56967/ejfb2026896

Abstract

Despite the significant role of small & medium business unit in manufacturing industry in the national economic development, especially in the developing countries, manufacturing industry has suffered from many problems such as, competition development in international markets, rapid advancement of technology and change in consumers behavior, which manufacturing unit small & medium enterprise of Iraq is unable to follow them all. This study aims to examine the role of mediation knowledge management between the IT capabilities and innovation capabilities in earlier studies, which did not involve the study of this mediating role. The technique used for collecting the data of 384 manufacturing industry (SME) in Iraq is quantitative technique with the instrument questionnaire to check the data by the using of (PLS-SEM) Model The finding results indicated that knowledge management was a positive and statistically significant mediating variable between the IT capability and the innovative capacity. Finally, there was a positive statistically significant mediation between knowledge management skills and IT capacities. The impact of mediation between knowledge management capacities and innovation capacities was also being felt. A practical contribution is suggested by the investments that needs to be done in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) that would be used as a strategic axis to promote innovation for SME in Iraq. The model accounted for much of the variance in the two constructs, namely innovation capabilities and knowledge capacities study, explaining the mechanisms that enable SMEs to innovate in Iraq, according to the Resource Based View approach (RBV).

Keywords

References

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