Does the size of the organization matter for knowledge management?
“Generally, any new management philosophy and technology are first implemented in large organizations and KM is no exception in this regard. Much of the seminal work on KM, features large multinational companies. However knowledge Management not only helps big organizations, but also provides benefits to small and medium scale companies.” (Sanghani, 2008)
It is therefore interesting to investigate possible differences when it comes to the size of the organization. There has been some earlier research towards this topic, which showed:
“(..) “organizational size” did not have any effect on the ‘initiation’ and ‘use behaviour’ of KMS.” A possible explanation, according to the researchers, is that “the competitive pressure has forced every business and organization practice knowledge management even though there are some differences in format, extent, complexity, advances, and experience of their knowledge management activities.” (Quaddus & Xu, 2007)
Results of the Research
Our research “The Human Factor in Knowledge Processes” investigated the organizational sizes of the participants. We compared the size to the amount of reported knowledge management behavior.
Looking at this graph, there is no real difference between the different organizational sizes and the reported knowledge behavior. This is in line with the earlier findings of Quaddus and Xu. The small organizations reported a lower score at some of the activities, but the error margin was too high to conclude that this is due to their size.
The tendency worth mentioning is the drop in searching for knowledge outside the organization when the organizations are big: 2500+. Such a tendency is dangerous, because it might lead to inward focused organizations, so-called “knowledge fortresses” (Barnard, 2003), which might have considerable negative effects on the longer term. We will dedicate a post on this in the near future.
Researched by http://www.weknowmore.org/
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No the size is not a matter for Knowledge management…..