Knowledge management in small and medium enterprises: An Australian study

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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES

Payam Ansari

Faculty of Management, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Malaysia [email protected]

Ali Tehraninasr Atieh Bahar Consulting, Tehran, Iran

[email protected] San Murugesan

Faculty of Management, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Malaysia [email protected]

ABSTRACT Knowledge management (KM) and successful implementation of knowledge management systems (KMS) are of key interest to many organizations, both large organizations and small-medium size enterprises (SMEs). However, how companies address the issue of KM often varies and is also a function of size of the organization. For instance, large corporations’ attitude might differ from that of SMEs. Hence, there is need to study these differences. In first part of this paper, we discuss major differences between the approaches to KM by large organizations and SMEs. SMEs, like their large counterparts, carry out diverse business functions (and activities), and each of these business functions plays an important role in the success of the company and attainment of its goals. Further, other factors such as the ownership, business strategies, organizational structure and culture, decision making process, and IT infrastructure, also influence the SMEs performance. Hence in order for an initiative like KM to be successfully implemented, all these influential elements must be taken into consideration and be thoroughly investigated as to how they facilitate the KM implementation process and how to ensure the success of the initiative. Thus, taking a holistic view, we investigate KM efforts in SMEs focusing on the impact of each function in an SME on KM implementation. Based on our study, we also provide recommendations to SMEs for successful implementation of KMS. KEYWORDS

Knowledge management (KM), Knowledge Management system (KMS), Small- and medium size enterprise (SME), Organizational learning 1. INTRODUCTION

In today’s business world, companies face major challenges to survive and excel in a highly competitive environment in which they currently operate. External factors such as weak economies, increasing costs of raw material and transportation, declining consumer sentiment, unfavorable market trends (http://www.noblebusinesssolutions.com/surveyresults.html) as well as internal constraints which include resource limitations, leaving expert (LX) (Hofer-Alfeis, 2008), and liquidity problems have made entrepreneurs and managers to think about new ways of value creation for consumers and successfully managing their business. One way to build value in the market is to produce knowledge-based products and/or services. Indeed, it is true that as Drucker (1999) claims knowledge has become the main resource for current economies. Knowledge is valuable, rare and hardly imitable (Jackson &


Hitt & DeNisi, 2004), and it is a main source of an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage (Cater, 2004; Magnier-Watanabe & Senoo, 2008; Ranjesh & Sanjeev, 2009). As the value of employees' and organizational knowledge, both tacit and explicit, has become a core competency for organizations and are more crucial to the companies' performance and competitiveness, the concept of knowledge management (KM) assumes greater importance. The importance of managing knowledge to sharpen the firm’s competitive position in the current environment is significant. All organizations whether large, medium or small can benefit from KM and gain strategic advantage by adopting sound KM practices and innovation (Tehraninasr, 2008). What is KM? In searching through a valid answer for this question, one encounters several diverse definitions, each of which emphasize on one or few aspects of this strategic tool. Nevertheless, one common characteristic among them is that almost all of these definitions highlight that organization’s knowledge should be managed in alignment to business goals to, help create value and generate a competitive advantage. While, as Swan et al. (2002) believes, there is no single definition of knowledge management, but general idea relates to unlocking and leveraging the knowledge of individuals so that the collective knowledge becomes available as an organizational resource. Both knowledge and knowledge management are complex multi-layered and multi-faceted concepts. The term knowledge management is any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organization. Knowledge management is also defined as “doing what is needed to get the most out of knowledge resources” (Becerra-Fernandez et al. (2004, p. 2), which promotes the creation, sharing and leveraging of the organization’s knowledge. Obviously, these two definitions emphasize the use of knowledge and sharing it in an organizational context. KM is the process of the capturing, structuring, managing and distributing the knowledge within an organization (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Pasternack and Viscio, 1998; Pfeiffer and Sutton, 1999; Ruggles and Holtshouse, 1999). As Oz (2008) pointed out, objectives of KM are to gather, organize, share, analyze, disseminate and use the knowledge. KM is a collaborative activity; as Grey (1996) asserts KM is a collaborative and comprehensive system of creating, saving, structuring and applying an organization's intellectual assets. Knowledge management (KM) and successful implementation of knowledge management systems (KMS) are of key interest to many organizations, both large organizations and small-medium size enterprises (SMEs). According to O’Dell et al. (1998), the main objectives of KM implementation in organizations include (1) transfer of best practices, (2) increasing employee capabilities, (3) customer-market information, (4) process improvement, (5) leveraging intellectual capital, (6) new product development and (7) customer relationship management. However, how companies address the issue of KM often varies and is also a function of size of the organization. For instance, small-medium size enterprises’ attitude might differ from that of large corporations. SMEs, like their large counterparts, carry out diverse business functions, and each of these business functions plays an important role in the success of the company and attainment of its goals. Further, other factors such as the ownership, business strategies, organizational structure and culture, decision making process, and IT infrastructure, also influence the SMEs performance. Hence, in order to implement knowledge management processes successfully, all these influential elements must be taken into consideration and be thoroughly investigated as to how they facilitate the KM implementation process and how to ensure the success of the initiative. In this paper, taking a holistic view, we investigate KM efforts in SMEs focusing on the impact of each function in an SME on KM implementation. 2. SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZE ENTERPRISE (SME)


The approach each organization tends to take toward KM depends on many factors including corporate culture, management support, and the size of the company. However, in this paper, our focus is on KM in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

2.1 SME Definition There are many definitions of SMEs; they classify a company as an SME primarily based on the number of employees and/or the annual turnover of the company. Some of these definitions follow: According to European Union (EU) legislation report:

A small enterprise is “an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 10 million” (http://europa.eu/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2003/l_124/l_12420030520en00360041.pdf). A medium-sized enterprise “as an enterprise which employs fewer than 250 persons and whose annual turnover does not exceed EUR 50 million or whose annual balance-sheet total does not exceed EUR 43 million.” A large enterprise is an “enterprise which employs more than 250 persons and its annual turnover exceeds EUR 50 million.

Other definitions of an SME are:

An SME is an organization which has less than 500 employees (Wickert & Herschel, 2001).

An SME is usually defined as a company with less than $ 2 million annually sale and employs less than 100 people (Delahaye, 2005).

However, a new way of classifying enterprises has been proposed by EU. It distinguishes between three types of enterprise on the basis of the type of relations they have with other enterprises in terms of percentage interest in capital, voting rights or the right to exercise a dominant influence (http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/enterprise/business_environment/n26026_en.htm):

• Autonomous enterprises • Partner enterprises • Linked enterprises

An autonomous enterprise is an enterprise that:

• does not have a holding of 25% or more in another enterprise; • is not owned 25% or more by an enterprise or public body or jointly by several linked enterprises or public bodies, with a few exceptions; • does not draw up consolidated accounts and is not included in the accounts of an enterprise which draws up consolidated accounts and is thus not a linked enterprise

A partner enterprise is an enterprise that is a partner of another enterprise and has 25% to 50% holding in the other enterprise and also meets the following requirements:

• The other enterprise has a holding of 25% to less than 50% in the applicant enterprise; • The applicant enterprise does not draw up consolidated accounts which include the other enterprise, and is not included by consolidation in the accounts of the other enterprise or of an enterprise linked to it.

A linked enterprise is an enterprise that “form a group through the direct or indirect control of the majority of the capital or voting rights (including through agreements or, in certain cases, through individual shareholders), or through the ability to exercise a dominant influence on an enterprise”.


2.2 Importance of SMEs As seen from the definitions above, apart from big conglomerates and large corporations the rest accounts for SMEs and they collectively constitute a considerable amount of each country’s economy. Hence there is an increasing awareness to the fact that SMEs play a “catalytic” role in the development process of most economies (Pillania 2008). In addition to playing a vital role in today’s global economies, SMEs are becoming main sources of manufacturing, services, export, employment, technical innovation and the promotion of entrepreneurial skills (Pillania 2008). As Delahaye (2005) posits, SMEs can also induce many innovative ideas and technological breakthroughs.

Reports from OEDC economies highlight significant role SMEs play globally. For instance, according to OEDC statistics, 95% of firms are SMEs, and 60-70% of employment and 55% of GDP emanate from SMEs and micro-enterprises which in turn can generate a substantial share of new jobs. Taking the case of developing countries, these statistics also indicate that more than 90% of all firms outside the agricultural sector are SMEs and micro-enterprises, and they generate a significant portion of GDP of those countries. For example, in Morocco, 93% of industrial firms are SMEs and they account for 38% of production, 33% of investment, 30% of exports and 46% of employment. In Bangladesh, enterprises of less than 100 employees account for 99% of firms and they provide 58% of employment. Similarly, in Ecuador, 99% of all private companies have less than 50 employees and they account for 55% of employment. Unsurprisingly, not all these SMEs and micro-enterprises are in the formal sector; some occupy the unofficial labor market, which varies in size from an estimated 4% to 6% in developed countries to over 50% in developing nations (http://www.wbcsd.org/web/publications/sme.pdf). According to the investigation by Schermerhorn et al. (2003), the same holds good for countries like Australia and New Zealand in which up to 90% of businesses in are small businesses. 3. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMEs AND LARGE CORPORATIONS

In previous section, it was attempted to first define SMEs in which it was explained that the focus was there basically on the number of employees and in same instances the annual turnover. However, if there must be a distinction between SMEs and large corporations it ought to cover different aspect of these entities like the resources they own, decision making process, organizational structure, employee turnover, etc. in this section some of these differences will be explained.

Perhaps one of the most important differences between SMEs and large corporations can be

attributed to the amount of resources they possess. Pillania (2008) believes that the basic requirements and resources of SMEs are different from big firms. Consensually many researchers agree that in general, SMEs have a scarcity of resources (Welsh and White, 1981; Lee and Oakes, 1995; Motwani et al., 1998; OECD, 2002; Jun and Cai, 2003); i.e. lack of time, financial and human resources, which differentiate SMEs from their larger counterparts.

The second element of dissimilarity can be found in the process of decision making: centralization

of decision making and the timeliness of it. The process of decision making in SMEs mostly takes place in a centralized manner. As SMEs are mostly entrepreneurial companies, the decision making process is highly centralized and is generally taken by one person who is usually the CEO and/or the chairperson and then the decision is communicated throughout the firm. On the contrary, decision making process in large enterprises is often decentralized, and decisions are made in board of directors meetings so that no single person can impose his favorite tendency.

Another aspect of difference between SMEs and big firms is the organizational structure. While large enterprises have more sophisticated structures which comprise diverse functions and departments, SMEs have mostly flat structures. The structure of an organization plays an important


role in the organization’s KM efforts. Studies reveal knowledge flow is easier and more efficient in flat structures.

Employee turnover is also a difference between large and small enterprises. Many fresh graduates join SMEs to gain experience and then tend to leave the company heading to larger and more reputable organizations. When an employee walks out of his firm he takes all his knowledge with him and the firm loses the knowledge that he used to do the business tasks. Hence, in such cases, organization needs to recruit a replacement and spend again on training the new employee and has to endure considerable time to the new-comer to adapt himself to the firms’ knowledge. Finally, since the human resource turnover in SMEs is relatively high, creating, sustaining and developing any kind of organizational culture, here knowledge sharing culture is too difficult. 4. KM: A NECESSITY

Knowledge management is particularly crucial for SMEs as they experience erosion of knowledge. In an SME, knowledge erosion can take place in a few different ways as outlined below:

i. Employee turnover. Key employee leaving their firms is a common happening. It might take

place due to retirement or switching to competitors or even changing the industry sector (Wickert & Herschel, 2001). Individuals are constantly seeking better careers and job prospects, and higher salaries in larger organizations (Wong & Radcliffe, 2000, Finn & Phillips 2002). When an employee leaves his firm, as Barchan (1999) points out: “… you lose more than that person’s knowledge. You also lose any investments you have made in that person’s professional development and competence – unless you find ways to capture it.”

ii. Succession in family-owned businesses. As Wickert & Herschel (2001) asserts, once an

enterprise’s owner dies or decides to quit, the knowledge within the company might become eroded. Further, the leadership change might drive some managers and employees to quit their jobs.

iii. Acquisition. Another company acquires or takes over the organization and it sometimes

results into employees turnover.

iv. Lay-off. In this case the owner dismisses an individual employee or a number of them The abovementioned events and circumstances result in knowledge loss. Knowledge erosion occurs

anyway and most of the time management is unable to do anything to prevent it; however, when knowledge management is in place in these SMEs, it can capture the knowledge within them beforehand and mitigate the loss incurred.

5. KM BENEFITS

The significance of KM in SMEs has been examined. Once an SME reaches a size that makes direct communication to, and between, employees impossible, the company will find KM as a helpful initiative to exploit knowledge it possess. Handzic (2004) highlights three other reasons for growing interest among enterprises towards KM:

1. Existence/influences of risk-minimizers in organizations. Basically, risk-minimizers expect

KM to capture and locate valuable company knowledge. 2. Existence/influences of efficiency seekers in organizations. They tend to make maximum use of

the existing knowledge through transferring and sharing practices.


3. Existence/influences of innovators in organizations. Innovators usually focus on new

knowledge and processes necessary for enabling creativity for successful innovations. As Handzic (2004) pointed out, the successful KM contributes to improved business competitiveness in several ways, including: i. Allowing organizations to develop a better understanding of customer and client needs,

preferences and pressures; ii. Facilitating stronger, longer-term partnership-style relationships with customers and clients; iii. Contributing to an organization's capacity to establish and sustain their status as thought

leaders; iv. Doing away with costs in business and production processes, and improve speed and quality; v. Assisting organizations to use lessons learned from previous jobs, projects and tasks, as means

of improving their future performance. 6. KM IN SMEs 6.1 Business Strategies

The importance and need for having business strategies for large corporations cannot be emphasized more; however this may be somehow different in case of SMEs. This does not mean that SMEs do not need business strategies but their approach to plan for their business needs are different. The nature of projects, plans and goals in SMEs are usually different from large firms. As they have limited resources the, goals should not be set for far future and should not be time-consuming. The contrary is the case for large enterprises. As they have more resources, their business strategies should mostly be focusing on long-term and futuristic goals. Likewise, when SMEs intend to strategize on their KM initiatives, they oftentimes try to capitalize on less expensive and more interactive tool and systems like web2 as well as simple documentation of relevant information on customers, suppliers and employees. Not to forget is the importance of congruence between KM goals and these SMEs’ short and long- term strategies (Hansen et al., 1999; Pillania, 2005, 2008, Zack, 2003).

6.2 Organizational Structure and Culture

As previously stated in this article SMEs tend to have more flat structures. In this case the communication among employees is usually easier and more encouraged. This flat structure and minimum bureaucracy can stimulate a more congenial atmosphere for employees to build teams and make new relationships which lead to larger networks in firm. This, in turn, makes a corporate culture which is more compliant with the KM needs of these enterprises. In the sense that, these large networks which are normally make an informal corporate culture result in more innovativeness and better knowledge sharing culture. Research studies also show that knowledge sharing within informal environments is easier and more seeable. Providing a comfort area for coffee breaks, lunch hours etc would help the process of knowledge sharing.

Paradoxically, it is generally hard to create and sustain a unified corporate culture in SMEs. One technique to instill the accommodating culture for implementing a more successful KM initiative is to use short-term culture. In this approach a given culture is imparted to employees by means of a mandating, reinforcement or giving incentives. This technique can be formal or informal. For instance, it can be clarified to employees that failure in completing certain forms they may be penalized (Ellerman, 1999; Wickert and Herschel, 2001). Another technique to ease knowledge sharing and KM process is to use job rotation. In this technique one employee gets to learn diverse skills and requirements of jobs in the company. Thus if one employee is absent, his colleague can cover him up (Nonaka, 1991; Wickert and Herschel, 2001).

6.3 Decision Making Process

One of the main advantages of KM in organizations is its facilitating nature in decision making process. As described earlier in this paper, there is a difference in decision making process between


SMEs and large enterprises. However, this does not change the fact that KM can be instrumental in both SMEs and large corporations. In SMEs both agility in decision making and responsiveness are crucial. This is basically due to the limited production volume or limited service offerings and also the large number of competitors compel them to make decisions promptly. Therefore an efficient KM system can provide timely and accurate knowledge and information to decision makers. Consequently, the issue of limited number of decision makers in SMEs

6.4 IT Infrastructure

IT can be considered as an enabler for success of a KM project. Yet, like their other limited resources, SMEs cannot spend lavishly on IT equipment and tools. Therefore, there needs to be a balance between expenditure on IT and its indispensable role.

According to Von Krogh et al. (2000) risk-minimizers tend to use data warehouses, yellow pages,

expert systems and similar KM technologies for locating and capturing existing knowledge. Efficiency-seekers tend to use Internet, Intranet, groupware and work-group technologies to support transfer-ring and sharing of best practices and experiences. Innovators tend to create an overall socio-technological context to enable new knowledge creation.

6.5 Influencing Factors on KM in SMEs

Let’s examine some of the major influencing factors on KM process in SMEs. Critical success factors (CSFs) can be defined as “areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organization” (Rockart, 1979). KM can be viewed as those activities and practices that should be addressed in order to ensure its successful implementation. They are controllable by an organization. For example external environment is not a KM CSF, because the organization doesn’t have control on that. Skyrme and Amidon (1997) highlighted seven key success factors:

• a strong link to a business imperative • a compelling vision and architecture • knowledge leadership • a knowledge creating and sharing culture • continuous learning • a well-developed technology infrastructure • systematic organizational knowledge processes.

Davenport et al. (1998) link KM to:

• economic performance or industry value • a clear purpose and language • a standard and flexible knowledge structure • multiple channels for knowledge transfer • a knowledge-friendly culture • a technical and organizational infrastructure • change in motivational practices senior management support

Wong (2005) enumerates 11 factors which can affect the process of KM in SMEs: • Management leadership and support; • Culture • Information technology • Strategy and purpose • Measurement


• Organizational infrastructure • Processes and activities • Motivational aids • Resources • Training and education; and • Human resource management.

7. PRACTICAL GUIDELINES FOR KM IMPLEMENTATION

To successfully implement of KM, companies should choose an appropriate approach for their implementation and outline a carefully drawn detailed plan. In doing so, it is important for SMEs to minimize the time and financial burden of their KM implementation. Implementing KM in an SME comprises four phases (Handzic 2004):

1. Build KM awareness. The first important task for organizations starting the KM journey is to

build KM awareness. This requires defining and communicating KM concepts, developing common terminology and creating a common understanding throughout the organization.

2. Aligning KM with business Strategy. Typically, it involves determining an organization's

position, considering its motives for KM, and determining expected out-comes and how to verify them.

3. Audit knowledge assets and resources (Strength & weakness analysis). According to Sveiby

(1997), every organization houses valuable intellectual material. It can be found in people, structures and processes and in customer relationships. It is of utmost importance for the design of the appropriate KM interventions to determine if this critical knowledge is tightly connected to the skills of people and deeply rooted in their years of experience or if is just kept in instructions, procedures, documents and data-bases. Otherwise, it is not possible to create the right 'ba'.

4. Right KM solution – development and implementation. The final recommendation for a

successful KM journey is to implement KM solutions that combine those processes, cultural adjustments and technologies that have the best potential to enhance knowledge and add value to the firm. This requires all sources and forms of knowledge to come into play to maximize business success.

8. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we examined the importance of SMEs to our economy and the society and emphasized that to excel in this knowledge-based economy management of knowledge plays a crucial role. Regardless of their size, all organizations need KM strategy, systems and tools to enable them utilize the most out of their knowledge resources. The size of the company that plan to embrace KM can also place some constraints on successful implementation of KM initiatives. For instance, SMEs might not have large amount of resources as big corporations, and hence SMEs need to allocate their limited resources highly efficiently to gain higher returns from them. SMEs should capture and exploit not only the internal knowledge of their employees but also the external knowledge of their customers and suppliers and their respective industry. Further, as employees’ turnover in SMEs is very high, creating knowledge sharing culture in SMEs is difficult. For successful and productive implementation of KM, management support and surveillance is very import. KM is instrumental in decision making in SMEs and can benefit SMEs in significant ways. SMEs should embark on their KM journey now! REFERENCES


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Knowledge management in small and medium enterprises: An Australian study

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