The state of SME knowledge management a multiple case study analysis

摘要

Small and medium-sized companies (SME) account for more than 50% of the added value throughout the EU-28. Organizational learning has been found to be a powerful tool to maintain flexibility and support sustainable competitive advantage. As of today not much is known about the methods, practices and tools SME employ to establish knowledge management (KM). Within our paper we present our findings of a case study analysis conducted within six German SME. Even if all investigated companies had a rather clear, yet not coherent understanding of the terms and the potential impact of knowledge and knowledge management, we could not identify any commonly applied KM methodology. Furthermore our cases suggest that technology companies tend to use broad tool support to store and access knowledge, whereas non-white collar businesses rather focus on interpersonal knowledge transfer.