Creating Incentive-Driven Tasks to Improve Knowledge Management in Sales Chain Relationships

Abstract

This paper looks at a business solution that has been designed to improve product knowledge in a company's supply chain by creating incentive-driven tasks to strengthen knowledge and communication links between members of the sales chain. Nonaka's theory of organizational knowledge creation is applied to this practical business solution in an effort to create a model for improving knowledge management strategy in the sales chain.There is a large amount of research on transaction management in the supply chain however this paper focuses on the management of industry and product knowledge in the supply chain. Many manufacturing companies rely on their sales chain to disseminate product and industry knowledge to the consumer yet there are few strategies designed to ensure that members of the sales chain develop this knowledge in the first place.This paper suggests ways of improving relationships along the sales chain by encouraging knowledge sharing and strengthening communication links along the chain by offering members of the chain rewards/incentives for their efforts. The tasks are incentive-driven, meaning that the people who are assigned the tasks will be rewarded for completing the tasks. The tasks are designed to encourage communication between the company and its supply chain members and ensure that knowledge is disseminated through the sales chain to the consumer. This paper also looks at technical solutions, using Internet-based knowledge management applications to support the knowledge sharing tasks and manage the rewards associated with them.