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Boundaries of digitalization – Why companies are still using e-mail and other traditional tools to manage their knowledge – and will they continue?

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Abstract

This chapter identifies relevant digital tools and managerial practices supporting firms in the different phases of knowledge management process. Based on a survey that involved 25 suppliers operating in high-tech industries, this chapter highlights that firms are generally inclined to use not updated knowledge management systems (KMS) instead of the newer ones, which are also cheaper and user friendly. This gap shows the difficulties that suppliers have to be responsive to the rapid technological changes as well as the lack of support from information and communication technology (ICT) vendors in the decision making process for choosing adequate IT-based tools (KM-Tools). The chapter also highlights that the majority of suppliers investigated adopts a variety of knowledge management practices (KM-Practices) that are used on average more intensely than KM-Tools. The field analysis demonstrates that many practices are common to many suppliers and that customers play a crucial role in supporting suppliers in their knowledge management process.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Mean and coefficient of variation were calculated considering that the total number of KM-Practices is 33, even though 17 out of 33 KM-Practices identified are not used by any of the surveyed supply firms (ideas competition, knowledge elicitation interview, rating, casual mapping, knowledge modelling, balanced scorecard, contextual inquiry, knowledge office, lesson learned, case based reasoning, communities of sharing, focus groups, project teams training, facilitated discussion, informal networks, knowledge cafes, seminars).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Napoli, Italien

    Piera Centobelli, Roberto Cerchione & Emilio Esposito

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  1. Piera Centobelli
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  2. Roberto Cerchione
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  3. Emilio Esposito
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Correspondence to Roberto Cerchione .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bühl, Germany

    Florian Schupp

  2. Baden-Baden, Germany

    Heiko Wöhner

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Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R., Esposito, E. (2018). Boundaries of digitalization – Why companies are still using e-mail and other traditional tools to manage their knowledge – and will they continue?. In: Schupp, F., Wöhner, H. (eds) Digitalisierung im Einkauf. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16909-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16909-1_3

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