Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage in Private Security: A Study In a Company in Santa Catarina, Brazil

Edson Roberto Scharf,Amélia Silveira

doi:10.4301/s1807-17752013000100002

Abstract

Os benefícios da gestão do conhecimento em empresas atuantes em mercados competitivos são conhecidos. A empresa líder no segmento de segurança privada no setor empresarial de Santa Catarina serviu como base para pesquisa quanto à adoção da gestão do conhecimento. A pesquisa foi exploratória, com método qualitativo. Os resultados permitiram constatar a viabilidade da gestão do conhecimento nas empresas do setor. Os investimentos no capital intelectual, mais especificamente no capital humano, são percebidos como necessários, sendo que o processo de gestão do conhecimento não se encontra formalizado nas organizações de segurança privada catarinenses. Itens importantes para implantação deste processo, como o início da participação em comunidades de prática; a organização, o tratamento e a retenção das informações da organização de maneira estratégica e a preocupação com a comunicação entre os seus colaboradores estão sendo considerados.

Highlights

The current market requires that companies have prompt response and be intelligent to deal with the demands, under the threat of disappearing in a short time.The private security sector is an example: with the increasing audacity of criminals, a good preparation for the continuous and systematic implementation of innovations in readiness and prevention techniques is required, according to Brasiliano and Branco (2003)
Through a study with a leading company of Santa Catarina in the private security sector, it was demonstrated that security organizations depend on their level of reliability
A constant innovative performance of the contracted company is required. Starting from this premise, firstly one concludes that knowledge management applied by adequately delineated processes can lead the organization to achieve significant improvements in its innovation, marketing, and relationship, and marketing processes, with the creation, sharing and use of knowledge

Summary

Introduction

The current market requires that companies have prompt response and be intelligent to deal with the demands, under the threat of disappearing in a short time.The private security sector is an example: with the increasing audacity of criminals, a good preparation for the continuous and systematic implementation of innovations in readiness and prevention techniques is required, according to Brasiliano and Branco (2003). Changes in the scoundrels’ actions are constant and the value safeguarded by companies is known beforehand by them and the intelligence and counterintelligence process becomes intense. As Bayley and Shearing (2001) inform, there is a strong pressure from insurance companies on organizations to hire specialized capital protection services. This reality leads to the need of knowledge production and maintenance for the success of business activities in this sector. Knowledge management is a process that creates, organizes and disseminates knowledge in the organization, facilitating and controlling access to knowledge in order to enable the company to have more agile actions. The adoption of knowledge management in the private security sector imposes itself as necessary for the survival of the business

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