Posted on : 2023-11-17 07:19:23
Article : 17th Nov 2023-Good Evening Friday Management TASK 268- SMEs need to improve knowledge management to attain more success at developing business excellence.
In every country SMEs are more in number supporting main line manufacturing or services industry segments. Due to their size many SMEs work with limited resources for development. Though they have structured business operation many SMEs lack knowledge management which is important for SMEs to service large firms as the wave of the knowledge era has equally affected all organizations. Even in Japan, 70% of the total workforce is engaged in the SMEs. It is observed that SMEs are facing similar challenges as large firms to adapt the knowledge era and global knowledge economy in order to survive and grow.
During the earlier industrial era, any company no matter how small or large it was, or what industry it belonged to competed for efficiency in the same industry. However, since the early 1990s, the paradigm of competition has gradually changed from war for efficiency to war for innovation. Efficient quality services have been commoditized, so small and medium service companies, more or less have to differentiate through the unique and innovative side of their services.
Secondly knowledge is rapidly becoming the most important asset virtually to all organizations, and small and medium enterprises are no exception. To remain competitive, SMEs must first know what their knowledge assets are, then how to manage and make use of these assets to get maximum return.KM can be a strategic weapon for SMEs that can help them to build more sustainable and superior business practices, making them less vulnerable to the economic cycles of industry. They must also ensure that the knowledge gained over the years stay within the company regardless of staff turnover as wealth of knowledge is embedded in people’s heads, work practices, and systems. So knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.
At any SME, it is usually tacit knowledge held in the heads of individuals that is of most value to the organization but SMEs face the risk of losing their competitiveness when their key employees leave the organization. Furthermore, SMEs in general have difficulties in attracting high-caliber, experienced employees, since talented people tend to go to larger organizations for higher compensation and they also face the problem of retaining specialized employees because of limited career opportunities. It is often true that employees see a small or medium sized business as a steppingstone to a larger organization. The departure of highly knowledgeable employees is a major threat to SMEs, unless that knowledge is captured, codified, and transferred throughout the organization. SMEs need to manage their key knowledge assets as much as large organizations do.
Collaboration and especially collaborative teams are now clearly recognized as the new engine for knowledge creation and innovation to bring in synergy in an organization. Collaborating is co-laboring, or working together to achieve a common or shared goal or a purpose, It represents a work practice, a work attitude, a work culture, that may need to be developed to become more successful at developing their business excellence.
To be more focused we are posting a relevant case study on Qian Hu Corporation of Singapore as an example in our “Good Morning Monday Management solution for TASK 268 post on Nov 23.
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