Rethinking knowledge management and the experience of a small and medium-sized enterprise

Knowledge is widely considered a business imperative that contributes to long-term competitiveness, which in turn sustains organizational development. Managing knowledge effectively, therefore, becomes crucial agenda in business practices. Despite the evolving awareness and attention, prior studies on knowledge management (KM) have encountered inconsistent findings and many organizations have obtained thwarted results from the adoption and implementation of KM. One frequent ‘criticism’ identifies the elusive and diverse contemplation of what KM is and how KM could be and/or should be incorporated in business processes. To address these issues, this paper aims to reexamine and rethink the relevant KM work, incorporate with the KM-related implications drawn from the organizational learning discipline so as to address the theoretical foundations and practical endeavors. It is argued that three interrelated elements — knowledge types, knower types, and knowledge manipulation activities — have to be fundamentally addressed and explored to provide a better understanding of KM. Appreciating the three inter-related elements can encourage more research to be undertaken with a holism of conceptualizations and empirical studies, and can invoke practitioners to consider, evaluate or rethink KM in a more rigorous sense in order to fit in their business strategies and policies. To make an initial attempt toward synthesizing the three elements, we conduct a preliminary case study regarding an experience of a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) in adopting KM, followed with implications and highlights of effective KM as management of hybrid of ‘soft’ issues, together with commonly identified ‘hard’ issues.