TQM: A facilitator to enhance knowledge management? A structural analysis

This study aims to examine the multi-dimensional relationship of total quality management (TQM) and knowledge management (KM) in both service and manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Six key practices of TQM originated from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) were chosen; whereas the KM elements were made up of knowledge acquisition, distribution and application. Data were gathered from small, medium and large firms from both manufacturing and service sectors. Structural analysis was carried out for the hypotheses and the theoretical model testing. Findings show that strategic planning and human resource management have a positive and significant relationship with the dimensions of KM; whereas process management has significant effects on knowledge acquisition and knowledge distribution. Practically, the findings provide a useful direction for the management team in the manufacturing and service sectors by adopting the relevant TQM practices to further improve the firms’ knowledge management processes. Through a deeper comprehension on the association between TQM practices and the KM dimensions, the management team of these firms can focus their attention, efforts and resources on the specific TQM practices that can ensure successful KM process.     

An empirical analysis of effective TQM implementation in the Hong Kong electronics manufacturing industry

The objective of this research is to develop a conceptual model of total quality management (TQM) implementation and test it empirically. The main research problem of this study is to investigate the effect of adopting TQM principles on quality achievement in manufacturing. The hypotheses specifying relationships between the core parts of the model including quality management infrastructure, core quality management practices, quality performance, and customer satisfaction are tested using survey research method. Data were collected from 50 managers of 25 manufacturing companies in Hong Kong. Correlation analysis on the ratings given by two different respondents from the same company shows that employee relations strongly facilitates the use of quality data and reporting, while training supports the function of product design, supplier quality management, and quality data and reporting. The results also indicate that employee relations and training have direct effects on quality performance which, in turn, relates to customer satisfaction. Practitioners are advised to build a supportive environment with a strong emphasis on human and organizational aspects to promote effective TQM implementation. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Knowledge Management Focus in US and Canadian Firms

Experts predict that as we approach the year 2000, employee brainpower and other knowledge resources are rapidly becoming the most important factors driving business profitability. The challenge for organizations over the next decade will be to understand the role of knowledge resources in creating value for firms. This article provides three perspectives to understand the notion of knowledge management. The first section provides an overview of trends and issues that highlight the emergence of the knowledge era. The second section of the article recaps the results of a survey of Fortune 500 and Post 300 firms that the authors conducted to learn about knowledge management practices. The last section of the article provides guidelines for getting started in knowledge management.     

A neo-institutional perspective on the establishment of information security knowledge sharing practices

Information security knowledge sharing (ISKS) among an organization's employees is vital to the organization's ability to protect itself from any number of prevalent threats, yet for many organizations, their ability to establish ISKS practices is hampered by a lack of understanding of where and how the key drivers of these practices will emerge. Based on neoinstitutional theory and a multi-study field survey of 834 professional managers in the USA, we develop and test a model that explains the establishment of ISKS practices in an organization as a product of the institutional forces abut to the organization providing normative, mimetic, and coercive influences on top management beliefs and participations in ISKS. Our findings also emphasize the importance of establishing ISKS practices for ensuring employee compliance with information security policies and an effective culture of security. Prior research has shown the importance of institutional forces on organizational processes as well as the importance of ISKS to organizational security efforts. However, this study is one of the early studies to provide insight into the manner, in which institutional forces hold sway over the people responsible for establishing the ISKS practices of a firm; insight that it is essential for firms that have yet to establish such practices or have struggled in their attempts to do so.     

Knowledge sharing practices as a facilitating factor for improving organizational performance through human capital: A preliminary test

Organizational knowledge sharing, argued to be able to improve organizational performance and achieve competitive advantage, is often not induced successfully. How organizations should encourage and facilitate knowledge sharing to improve organizational performance is still an important research question. This study proposes and examines a model of organizational knowledge sharing that improves organizational performance. Organizational knowledge sharing practices are argued to be able to encourage and facilitate knowledge sharing, and are hypothesized to have a positive relationship with organizational human capital (employee competencies), which is hypothesized to have a positive relationship with organizational performance. Two organizational antecedents (innovation strategy and top management knowledge values) are hypothesized to lead to the implementation of organizational knowledge sharing practices. The hypotheses were examined with data collected from 256 companies in Taiwan. All the hypotheses are supported. This study has both theoretical and practical implications.     

E-commerce communities as knowledge bases for firms

Most studies in the knowledge management literature investigate diversified issues from a firm and organizational perspective. Based on the observations of practices in Asia, many knowledge activities occur at the e-commerce community level and represent knowledge activities for whole communities. Hence, this study is intended to explore knowledge management issues in e-commerce communities, and comprehend the way it is practiced. This study reports on a series of in-depth interviews, reviews academic and practical knowledge management cases to construct a model, and categorizes knowledge management activities in e-commerce communities in four different modes. They include knowledge dissemination, knowledge advancement, knowledge sharing deals, and knowledge generation. A number of hypotheses are proposed that relate e-commerce-related knowledge management’s impact on innovativeness performance. This research involves an empirical study of 107 leading organizations in the business-to-business e-commerce community in China and Taiwan. The statistical results provide evidence to confirm the proposed model and the effects of e-commerce community-based knowledge management on innovativeness.     

The impact of trust,guanxi orientation and face on the intention of Chinese employees and managers to engage in peer‐to‐peer tacit and explicit knowledge sharing

Knowledge sharing is recognised as one of the most critical components of knowledge management. Successful and efficient knowledge sharing could directly facilitate knowledge creation and so help a firm to maintain its competitive advantage. Consequently, identifying which factors could encourage or inhibit people to share knowledge is potentially of great value. In this study, we explore the impact of selected socio‐cultural factors, viz. trust, guanxi orientation and face, on the intention to share explicit and tacit knowledge in Chinese firms. Two hundred and four employees from Chinese organisations were surveyed on their knowledge‐sharing practices. Our findings indicate that while cognition‐based trust has no significant effect on the intention to share either tacit or explicit knowledge, affect‐based trust has a significant effect on both. Meanwhile, face‐gaining behaviours have a positive effect, while face‐saving behaviours have a negative effect on the intention to share knowledge. Finally, guanxi orientation also has a strong impact on knowledge sharing. The implications of these findings for organisations and their knowledge management initiatives are discussed.     

Information technology as a facilitator for enhancing dynamic capabilities through knowledge management

Research on dynamic capabilities is an emerging field: it studies the activities of firms during turbulent administrative environments. Current management interests are also focused on knowledge management as a major determinant of business excellence and competitive advantage. Our motivation for this paper was to answer the research question: Does knowledge management (KM) contribute to the enhancement of dynamic capabilities and thus to the enhancement of business excellence and competitive advantage? Our effort examined the use of KM in enhancing dynamic capabilities. Based on results from a survey of major Taiwanese firms, we tested a set of hypotheses with regression models. Empirical findings suggest that management of both endogenous and exogenous knowledge through IT applications significantly enhances dynamic capabilities.     

Value creation through marketing data analytics: The distinct contribution of data analytics assets and capabilities to unit and firm performance

This study answers research calls regarding data analytics in a specific unit and its impact at the unit and organizational level. In doing so, it takes an information value chain approach to theorize about how quality data and IT-enabled data analytics sensing capability in the marketing unit relate differently to the unit performance as well as to firm-level performance. Results from a survey of 346 firms confirm the hypotheses by showing partially and fully mediated effects for quality data, and direct and partially mediated effects for sensing capability.     

Fuzzy DEMATEL method for developing supplier selection criteria

Supply chain management (SCM) practices have flourished since the 1990s. Enterprises realize that a large amount of direct and indirect profits can be obtained from effective and efficient SCM practices. Supplier selection has great impact on integration of the supply chain relationship. Effective and accurate supplier selection decisions are significant components for productions and logistics management in many firms to enhance their organizational performance. This study pioneers in using the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method to find influential factors in selecting SCM suppliers. The DEMATEL method evaluates supplier performance to find key factor criteria to improve performance and provides a novel approach of decision-making information in SCM supplier selection. This research designs a fuzzy DEMATEL questionnaire sent to seventeen professional purchasing personnel in the electronic industry. Our research results find that stable delivery of goods is the most influence and the strongest connection to other criteria.     

Applying hierarchical task analysis to improving the patient positioning for direct lateral interbody fusion in spinal surgery

The present study brings together for the first time the techniques of hierarchical task analysis (HTA), human error identification (HEI), and business process management (BPM) to select practices that can eliminate or reduce potential errors in a surgical setting. We applied the above approaches to the improvement of the patient positioning process for lumbar spine surgery referred to as ‘direct lateral interbody fusion’ (DLIF). Observations were conducted to gain knowledge on current DLIF positioning practices, and an HTA was constructed. Potential errors associated with the practices specific to DLIF patient positioning were identified. Based on literature review and expert views alternative practices are proposed aimed at improving the DLIF patient positioning process. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use BPM in association with HEI/HTA for the purpose of improving the performance and safety of a surgical process – with promising results.     

Integrating ICTs and Supply Chain Management: The Case of Micro‐Sized Firms

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have changed the relationship between suppliers and buyers, and the nature of supply chain management. Previous research has studied this topic, but not from the point of view of micro‐sized companies. Micro‐sized companies are of critical importance for economies worldwide. Thus, in Europe 90% of companies are micro‐enterprises and account for 53% of employment. This article presents a new perspective by studying the impact of the introduction of e‐supply chain management on such firms. Through a literature review, we identified four key supplier‐related factors, that is, the use of ICTs, process efficiency, workforce capabilities, and the introduction of e‐supply chain management. However, these factors could differ in the case of micro‐sized companies. The data used for the empirical analysis came from a survey of 405 micro‐sized companies in Spain. Using a structural equation modeling, the results indicate that ICTs have a positive direct effect on e‐supply chain performance. It is also found that this effect is accompanied by the improved development of human resource skills and enhanced process efficiency. In addition, a number of recommendations for improving managerial practices are also proposed.     

Mining association rules for the quality improvement of the production process

Academics and practitioners have a common interest in the continuing development of methods and computer applications that support or perform knowledge-intensive engineering tasks. Operations management dysfunctions and lost production time are problems of enormous magnitude that impact the performance and quality of industrial systems as well as their cost of production. Association rule mining is a data mining technique used to find out useful and invaluable information from huge databases. This work develops a better conceptual base for improving the application of association rule mining methods to extract knowledge on operations and information management. The emphasis of the paper is on the improvement of the operations processes. The application example details an industrial experiment in which association rule mining is used to analyze the manufacturing process of a fully integrated provider of drilling products. The study reports some new interesting results with data mining and knowledge discovery techniques applied to a drill production process. Experiment’s results on real-life data sets show that the proposed approach is useful in finding effective knowledge associated to dysfunctions causes.     

The joint impact of service-oriented architectures and business process management on business process quality: an empirical evaluation and comparison

What is the interplay between business process management (BPM) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) in achieving high business process quality? In this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of both SOA and BPM on business process quality in terms of straight-through processing, business-to-business integration, quality control, as well as standardization and consolidation of business processes. For the empirical evaluation of our model, we use the data of 157 German service firms. The results show that the SOA paradigm has still received rather low adoption rates in the industry. However, SOA, BPM, and related information technologies have a direct positive impact on business process quality and the analysis provides evidence for the complementarities of BPM and SOA since interaction effects between them have an additional significant impact on business process quality. Consequently, firms having adopted SOA can more effectively apply BPM.     

制度压力对云计算内化影响的实证研究

 基于制度理论构建云计算内化的影响因素的理论模型,以中国376家已采纳了云计算技术的企业为研究对象,利用结构方程模型,对制度压力以及高层管理支持对企业云计算内化的影响进行实证研究。研究发现：模仿压力显著正向影响高层管理支持,通过高层管理支持间接地影响企业云计算内化,但对企业云计算内化没有直接影响;强制压力对云计算内化既没有直接影响也没有间接影响;规范压力不仅显著正向影响企业云计算内化,还会通过高层管理的支持间接影响企业云计算的内化。最后,本文在实证研究结果的基础上给出促进中国企业云计算内化的的管理启示和政策建议。     

考虑知识溢出下产业集群创新网络协同知识创造决策分析

协同知识创造对于企业维持和获取竞争优势具有重要作用,但是知识外溢会对企业的竞争力造成威胁,从而使企业在创新网络协同知识创造决策时陷入两难困境.鉴于此,通过构造由一个核心企业和n个从属企业组成的创新网络在协同知识创造过程中知识投入决策Stackelberg博弈模型,引入知识内溢系数、私有知识、知识外溢损失等变量,探讨知识溢出下,网络成员的知识投入决策和知识产出分配问题.研究结果表明:核心企业与从属企业的知识投入比和知识投入总量与协同知识创造绩效和知识内溢收益之和有关,而与私有知识外溢的损失无关;集群创新网络协同知识创造机制得以运行的条件是核心企业的知识创造收益(即知识创造绩效与知识内溢收益之和)足够大;核心企业的知识投入比与其边际收益和知识内溢系数正相关,与从属企业的边际收益和知识内溢系数负相关;协同知识创造过程中从属企业会根据其边际收益和知识内溢系数按比例分配知识的投入比.     

Embracing Innovation as Strategy: Corporate Venturing,Competence Building and Corporate Strategy Making

Large diversified companies companies do not have good track records in managing discontinuous change and in turning breakthrough innovations into long‐term growth and profit engines. Their existing technological capabilities tend to facilitate cognitive inertia, path dependency and low levels of experimentation. However, some companies seem to find a dynamic balance between exploitation and exploration, between path creation and path dependence. We focus on how these established firms manage that continuous change process, and more specifically we seek to answer how corporate strategy, competence building and new business development interact in rejuvenating a company. Furthermore, we investigate how these concepts are at play on an operational level by looking at corporate practices in large companies that have a track record of successful strategic rejuvenation.     

An empirical study of the effects of knowledge sharing and learning behaviors on firm performance

Knowledge sharing and learning behaviors in the workplace are believed to be very important to the success of firms. In this study, the relationships between knowledge sharing and learning behaviors, business process improvement, product and service offerings, and organizational performance are examined based on a sample of 134 firms engaged in manufacturing, and wholesale or retailing operations. Data analyses using the partial least squares statistical technique revealed that knowledge sharing and learning behaviors are positively associated with business process improvement, and product and service offerings. Business process improvement and product and service offerings are positively associated, and they in turn are positively related to organizational performance. The findings reinforce the importance of knowledge sharing and learning to companies. Executives should encourage knowledge management and organizational learning activities within their firms, and give proper considerations to the strategies and implementation of programs supporting these activities in order to enhance firm performance.     

员工知识共享行为树的动态创建算法

采用建立知识共享行为ontology和行为树映射方法,设计了一种能够根据员工的知识行动动态生成其行为树的有效算法。该算法具有实时、交互式的特点,能够实现对员工知识共享的参与度作出定量评价。