The studies in the first category measure the impact of KM
strategies on organizational performance by using financial indices
likereturnonsales (ROS), returnonassets(ROA),andreturnonequity
(ROE). Pai [18] empirically investigated 20 Taiwanese integrated
circuit (IC)designfirms from1997to2002,andcategorizedtheminto
discoverers, discretionists, external learners, internal exploiters, and
overall creationists – emphasizing both learning from external
sources and exploitation frominternal sources. Itwas found that the
internal exploiters were the best performers, while the discoverers
were the worst in terms of ROA and ROE.