Managing Knowledge in Fashion Businesses: A Contextual Review

Abstract

This research concerns how to implement knowledge management for coordination and collaboration and what the important issues are in managing knowledge in today's globalizing fashion business contexts. Through a literature survey, we develop an implementation framework that provides a new, knowledge-centred management paradigm for organizations. We begin with a discussion of the issues of knowledge and knowledge management as aspects of the organizational process, and examine how knowledge management aids networked organizations in managing, sharing, and transferring their "knowledge". On such a premise we examine a case of how knowledge management can be operationalized and assessed in terms of the three-dimensional aspects of managing the latest communication and coordination technologies: predictability, interconnectedness, and efficiency. Although our research is based on empirical observations of international textile and apparel companies, the contextual elements governing the use of the technologies apply to all businesses that rely on proper communication and coordination to plan and monitor globally dispersed functional teams and enterprises.