In hyper competitive and uncertain market where technologies,
products and services are changing very fast, the companies
are required to develop the ability to create, disseminate
and effectively use the organizational knowledge. Toffler
in his book titled Third Wave arrived at `knowledge wave'
which is termed by many as the 'Knowledge boom'. Knowledge
Management (KM) is seen as a key factor for success in business
and survival in this knowledge economy. Generally, any new
management philosophy and technology are first implemented
in large organizations and KM is no exception in this regard.
A review of the earlier literature on knowledge and KM concludes
that a majority of the past experiences and developments
in the area of KM have occurred in the western industrialized
countries. Much of the seminal work on KM, features large
multinational companies. Knowledge Management not only helps
big organizations, but also provides benefits to small and
medium scale companies. There is limited research available
on KM in small and medium scale companies; and comparative
KM research between large size organization and small and
medium scale organizations is also rare. This paper empirically
tries to prove the relationship between starting a KM program
and the organization size. This research work in India is
the first of its kind.
As markets change, uncertainty increases and competition
and technologies shift at a faster rate. The winning organizations
are characterized by their ability to create, disseminate
and use organizational knowledge effectively. As described
by Toffler in his book titled Third Wave, knowledge era
has arrived. Today's new economy is the knowledge economy.
Organizations are discovering that they need to do a better
job of capturing, distributing, sharing, preserving, securing,
and valuing knowledge in order to stay ahead in their competition
(Liebowitz and Beckman, 1998). Knowledge Management (KM)
is seen as the key factor for success in business and survival
in this knowledge economy.
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