Hari, S; Egbu, C O and Kumar, B (2004) Knowledge capture in small and medium enterprises in the construction industry: Challenges and opportunities. In: Khosrowshahi, F (ed.) Proceedings of 20th Annual ARCOM Conference, 1-3 September 2004, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
There is now a great deal of interest among researchers and practitioners regarding the importance of knowledge management (KM) in an organisational context. Few large construction organisations have implemented and reaped the benefits of formal KM approaches. However, there are very few empirical studies on KM geared towards small and medium enterprises (< 250 employees). This paper is part of on-going PhD research on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), focusing on KM. A pilot study was conducted, involving twelve professionals from eleven organisations, prior to the main study. The pilot study revealed that, for SMEs, knowledge capture was the most challenging process in the 'knowledge management cycle'. Hence, this paper discusses the importance and challenges of knowledge capture from a social and technological perspective. It will also discuss appropriate methodology for knowledge capture. In addition, the paper documents the nature of training provisions that will benefit SMEs through their knowledge capture initiatives. It also notes that SMEs can benefit from effective knowledge capture practices. Capturing knowledge within an organisation helps in problem solving, managing change, organisational learning, succession planning and innovation, to name a few. The paper concludes that capturing knowledge in SMEs is not easy. It is an integrated and complex social process, which has culture, people, technology, communication, leadership and organisational structures at its core. The paper recommends that more research effort needs to be targeted at improving knowledge capture practices in SMEs, and that there is ample scope for empirical research in this area.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | knowledge capture; knowledge management; small and medium enterprises |
| Index terms: | knowledge management, knowledge capture, construction industry, problem solving, documents, practitioner, methodology, social process, empirical study, organizational structure, succession planning, organizational learning, large construction organization |
| Subjects: | professional development, decision-making and reasoning, research methods, management, industry analysis, communities and social development, sociology, practitioner, economic analysis, knowledge management |
| Topics: | Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Information Management, Business Strategy, Organizational Design, Human Resources |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here