Leveraging IT to Support a Knowledge Environment: Cases in Small to Medium Sized Enterprises

Knowledge Management has been identified as a critical intangible asset required by organizations to be competitive and even survive in today's rapidly changing and unpredictable economic environment. Much of the research in this area focuses on how large multinational are dealing with the issues surrounding knowledge management, this work-in-progress study investigates the SME's ability to capture, store, disseminate and create organizational knowledge. This research places particular focus on IT as a facilitator for knowledge management as a means of enhancing supplier and customer relationships, and improving business processes. In this paper, a review of the literature is undertaken and a matrix mapping organizational knowledge repositories to factors influencing SME's ability to manage knowledge is proposed. Finally, a research strategy comprising a qualitative case-based approach is addressed.