Knowledge Management Acceptance: Success Factors amongst Small and Medium-Size Enterprises

Abstract

Problem statement: The value and importance of knowledge, as seen by numerous organisations today, does without a doubt play a crucial role in the current ever-challenging and aggressive business environment. As a result, businesses that aspire to be labelled as being successful and competitive need to seek and find better ways to improve their firms’ performance. Hence, Knowledge Management (KM), which is viewed as a source of sustainable competitive advantage, has attracted the attention of various companies all over the business world, including Small and Medium-Size Enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. With the realisation of KM, the systematic management of organisation knowledge - a strategic corporate asset not to be taken lightly; can thus be created, transferred, shared and, utilised, in pushing for greater organisational competitiveness, innovativeness and, productivity. This research examined the success factors that help to increase the business performance of SMEs in Malaysia. Besides, it also highlighted the importance and contribution of KM amongst SMEs. Therefore, the reason behind this study is to understand and recognised the acceptance of KM and therefore further classified the success factors that contributed to the business performance outcome amongst SMEs in Malaysia. With this, the success factors observed in this research; culture; leadership; employee participation; Information and Communications Technology (ICT); organisational structure; are thoroughly investigated to explore on whether these factors have an impact on knowledge creation; knowledge transfer; knowledge sharing and knowledge utilisation; of KM processes among SMEs in Malaysia. Approach: This study aids to determined and examined the success factors; culture; leadership; employee participation; Information and Communications Technology (ICT); organisational structure; of SMEs that further influences KM processes; knowledge creation, transfer, sharing, utilisation. Results: It is hoped that SMEs with the help of this study, are able apply the success factors and KM processes as a guideline in achieving successful KM acceptance. It is anticipated that the factors proposed in this study could help businesses especially SMEs to better organise their KM initiatives, as well as to assists Malaysia in producing a superior and highly acclaimed knowledgeable society. Conclusion: The findings may be used as recommendations to SMEs that are keen in accepting and adopting KM in their daily operations. Furthermore, this study may also serve as a basis for future quantitative research studies among researchers, practitioners and professionals alike, in gaining a profound understanding of KM in sectors other than SMEs.