The Relationship between KM Strategies and IT Applications in SMEs

Little is known about how small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) utilize their information technology (IT) to support their Knowledge Management (KM) strategy. Some research has been conducted in this field but from a western cultural perspective, and mainly in the large organizations context. Research on the relationships between KM strategy and IT in SMEs in developing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, is limited. The research reported in this paper addressed this relationship. KM strategy, in this research has been classified into two main strategies: aggressive KM strategy and conservative KM strategy, based on the organizations' orientation towards eight dimensions: external knowledge, internal knowledge, tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, exploration, exploitation, broad knowledge-base and narrow knowledge-base. A total of 143 SMEs, participated in the survey. The results indicate that the proposed classifications of KM strategies were valid; the IT applications can be classified into: Internet-based IT, IT for codification and IT for collaboration; and the association between KM strategy and IT was confirmed.