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The Use of Hard and Soft Technologies for Knowledge Management in Small Businesses
Abstract
The business landscape has seen tremendous changes in the last decade and half. These changes include an increase in the number of market economies around the world, global production and consumption, enhanced individual and organizational technology sophistication and capability, the downward trend in technology usage costs, and use of the Internet and other computer networks for a range of business and personal activities. The source of competition is not the firm across the street but often it is global. Researchers have suggested that firm need to be agile (Mathiyalakan et. al. 2005) and that the classical view of production which encompasses land, labor, and capital need to modified to include knowledge which has become the predominant factor of production (Drucker, 2002). Knowledge is “the whole body of cognition’s and skills which individuals use to solve problems. It includes both theories and practical, everyday rules and instructions for action. Knowledge is based on data and information, but unlike these, it is always bound to persons. It is constructed by individuals, and represents their beliefs about causal relationships” (Probst et. al. 1999). Simply put, knowledge management is concerned with “representing and processing knowledge. This includes knowledge handling by individuals, computers and all kinds of organization” (Holsapple and Whinston, 1996).
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