Technological tools KM and innovation in SME enterprises

Abstract

Knowledge management has emerged over the past decade as one of the key issues at the heart of modern organisations. Knowledge management as a process that supports an organisation in finding, selecting, organising and disseminating relevant information and expertise, essential for activities such as problem solving, learning, strategic planning and decision making. Knowledge management is an emergent system of organisational design and operational principles, processes, organisational structures, applications and technologies that help knowledge workers increase their creativity and ability to deliver commercial value. The issue of knowledge management is primarily considered in the context of large organisations. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid in the literature to the specifics of knowledge management in small and medium-sized enterprises. The focus of researchers attention on large enterprises is partly due to the fact that the larger the enterprise, the greater the challenges regarding key knowledge management processes, including, for example, knowledge dissemination. Awareness of the organisation's knowledge is higher in SMEs than in large organisations. Due to their size, SMEs do not have the same problems in communicating and disseminating knowledge within the organisation as large enterprises, so formal knowledge dissemination activities and processes are less frequently implemented. In addition, formal approaches to knowledge management use IT systems, which are costly and mostly designed for large organisations. Financial barriers and the different needs of SMEs therefore mean that formal knowledge management may not be fully implemented in SMEs. Therefore, it becomes important to examine the use of technological tools in knowledge management and their impact on the innovativeness of a company from the SMEs. The main research objective of the article is to analyse the use of technological tools for knowledge management in companies operating in the Polish SME market and their impact on innovation. Specific research objectives included assessing the level of ICT use in SMEs, identifying the level of employment of ICT specialists by SMEs, identifying the use of websites, social media and cloud computing by SMEs, identifying technological tools supporting knowledge management in SMEs, assessing the impact of technological knowledge management tools on innovation in SMEs. The research was conducted in 2022 using the CATI method among 600 randomly selected SMEs operating on the Polish market. The majority of SMEs do not employ employees with specialised digital competences. Such people are employed by less than 8% of small and 30% of medium-sized companies. The situation is completely different in large companies - almost 3/4 of them employ ICT specialists. Employers have a problem recruiting digitally competent employees. For this reason, outsourcing IT services is becoming increasingly popular, especially among small and medium-sized companies. Companies that use technological knowledge management tools are more innovative.