Knowledge Management Adoption and Assessment for SMEs by fuzzy Decision Making Techniques

This paper proposes a Fuzzy Group Decision Approach for making strategic decisions about knowledge management adoption. Most SMEs are suffering because of low profits caused by hyper competition and OEM dead-end. Moreover, since the middle of 2008, the financial tsunami has caused serious damage to the global economy. They lack the financial and systematic basis to introduce knowledge management practices and make innovations. Several researchers have explored the gaps in the knowledge management activities of enterprises. Their studies reveal that corporate performance is significantly influenced by those gaps. Our research aimed to clarify the misunderstanding of high expenditure on knowledge management systems adoption, and provided a novel approach for the most emergent knowledge management components to catch up the paces of their rival for the late adopter of knowledge management systems. The DEMATEL (Decision MAking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) method gathers collective knowledge to capture the causal relationships between strategic criteria. This paper applies the DEMATEL method in the strategic planning of knowledge management to help managers address the above situations and related questions.