Journal Article


Knowledge identification in medium sized enterprises under the context of quality improvement: An exploration in manufacturing companies in China

Abstract

As a fundamental element of knowledge management (KM), knowledge identification is a crucial issue in contemporary business organisations. As evidenced by research, medium sized enterprises (MEs) contribute constructively and significantly to economic development, society stabilisation and employment increase. Their healthy survival and growth are of critical importance to a nation. Among the approaches ensuring the successful development of MEs, quality improvement (QI) is a crucial one. However, what is and how to identify the knowledge most relevant to the MEs’ QI, the drives and sources for identifying the QI knowledge (QIK) as well as the underpinning rationales, are currently lacking of sufficient exploration. A research focusing on these issues has been strongly emphasised by literature and attested by this research itself of its meaningfulness. Through analysing empirical data collected and attested by a combination of firstly semi-structured interview, focus group following a case study strategy and then a structured interview, this exploratory research has obtained and prioritised the up-to-date answers to these questions, leading to the enrichment of the theoretical understanding of KM approaches in operations with a consideration of quality management. Real world MEs can rely on these findings as a guidance to obtain, select and apply appropriate QIK for their operations performance improvement. The findings can also be referential for knowledge identification and application in view of QI in other type business organisations. 

Attached files

Authors

Wang Chengbo
Mao Zhaofang
Su Hong
Tian Ying

Oxford Brookes departments

Oxford Brookes Business School

Dates

Year of publication: 2020
Date of RADAR deposit: 2020-03-11


Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License


Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of Knowledge identification in medium-sized enterprises under the context of quality improvement: An exploration in manufacturing companies in China

Details

  • Owner: Joseph Ripp
  • Collection: Outputs
  • Version: 1 (show all)
  • Status: Live
  • Views (since Sept 2022): 289