Browsing by Author "Julius Otundo"

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    COVID-19 Knowledge Management on SMES Survival
    (International Journal of Research in Education Humanities and Commerce, 2023-04) Julius Otundo
    The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has adversely affected the global community and like most countries, Kenya has not been spared, Kenya’s international trade performance, its financial and commodity markets, and the entire macroeconomic environment have all been affected (Gui2de EA., 2019).SMEs have been vulnerable to the effects of the covid-19 pandemic as seen in the report by the International Trade Centre, (2020) it was uncovered that two-thirds of these SMEs have had their operations strongly impacted by the pandemic with two-thirds of all businesses claiming that same in Africa. Moreover, informal businesses are at a higher risk of closing down and are more susceptible to the effects of the pandemic due to their reduced ability to access financing. SMEs in Kenya have been facing unprecedented income losses and uncertainties about their future because of business disruptions due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Most SMEs do not have financial reserves to meet expenses during emergencies. SMEs need Knowledge management support to access and adopt digital technologies as well as respond to the current pandemic situation and for long-term transformation (Diana, S. et al., 2020). To increase their understanding of consumer needs, the business environment, and the actions of their rivals, SMEs must engage in knowledge acquisition, which is the process of gathering information from a variety of sources (Koohang, et al., 2017). Knowledge management, a process of acquiring, converting, applying, and protecting knowledge assets, is crucial for value creation. The purpose of this paper is to integrate these Knowledge management processes (knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, knowledge application, and knowledge protection), into the SMEs to help them adapt and respond to the current pandemic. This paper seeks to discuss some knowledge management initiatives to help SMEs handle these critical issues of the COVID-19 pandemic that will help them to sustain livelihood in the pandemic and eventually encourage knowledge management initiatives such as avoiding misinformation, psych educational, and, developing competencies such as resilience, agility, and ambiguity tolerance in the SMEs that can work to tackle the pandemic crisis.
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    Knowledge Transfer and Organizational Capabilities
    (International Journal of Research in Education Humanities and Commerce, 2023-04) Julius Otundo
    Today’s Economy is rapidly facing changes in globalization and Knowledge-based products and services. The survival and performance of an organization are influenced by its ability and speed in Developing knowledge-based competencies among the employees (Salina and Fadzilah,2008) According to Goh, SC. (2002), One of the major challenges an organization faces are managing its knowledge assets. Increasingly, knowledge transfer is seen as a basis for competitive advantage. Organizations always face issues with the kind of information, competencies, and expertise that are essential for it to take widespread advantage of available opportunities (Husnain et al., 2021). In addition to these competencies, an organization must possess unique features that competitors find difficult to imitate while operating in the same market and industry (Sousa and Rocha 2019; Sohail et al., 2020). This paper explores, in-depth, the role that key strategic organizational capabilities play in facilitating or preventing knowledge transfer. The paper converses knowledge transfer in an organizational context, then discusses significant organizational capabilities that trigger knowledge transfer and further discuss how these organizational capabilities influence the ability to transfer knowledge, an important area of knowledge management. Each of these key capabilities and their influence on Knowledge transfer is discussed separately and then integrated into a framework to explain how effective knowledge transfer can be managed in an organization with such capabilities. Conclusions are drawn about the complexity of knowledge transfer and the need to take a balanced approach to the process.
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    Tacit Knowledge Management in SMES in Kenya
    (International Journal of Research in Education Humanities and Commerce, 2023-04) Julius Otundo
    According to Michael Polyani (2002), a Hungarian-British polymath, Tacit knowledge is bi-structured with conscious and unconscious propositions. He emphasized that all employees needed a combination of theoretical and formal knowledge and experience, intuition, and spontaneous information. In SMEs, tacit knowledge is in the structure and relationship of people. This mixture allows them to know and act within the rules of the organization, and cope with changing conditions flexibly. Going by the established relationship between organizational competitive advantage and tacit knowledge, it is important to understand the tacit knowledge management strategies of the SME sector, which has been confirmed to be a major economic support for nations, irrespective of the development level. In developing countries such as Kenya, SMEs play a significant role in practically all economies, especially, with challenges relating to employment and income distribution (Ozkan et al., 2019, p. 1). In particular, the ability of SMEs in Kenya to compete is crucial to their economic success. Managing tacit knowledge will reduce the negative consequences of losing employees, preserve organizational memory, ensure continuity of performance, and reduce organizational knowledge gaps. These will, in turn, aid organizational competitive advantage (Adesina, A. O & Ochola., 2020). With the above in mind, this paper discusses how SMEs in Kenya presently manage their tacit knowledge focusing on people and processes in order to develop a framework that will support tacit knowledge management. It looks deeper at SMEs as a key component of knowledge management and a matter of management philosophy about knowledge.
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    Tacit Knowledge Sharing and Organizational Competitiveness in Kenya
    (International Journal of Research in Education Humanities and Commerce, 2023-04) Julius Otundo
    According to Choi &lee 2003, tacit knowledge is what is rooted in the mind and can be transferred in form of learning by doing and learning by watching. It can be completely tacit, semiconscious, or unconscious knowledge held in people’s heads and bodies (Leonard & Sensiper, 1998) Tacit knowledge can be classified into two dimensions: technical and cognitive (Pathirage et al., 2007). Technical encompasses information and expertise in relation to “know-how” while cognitive consists of mental models, beliefs, and values. Tacit knowing embodied in physical skills resides in the body’s muscles, nerves, and reflexes and is learned through practice. Tacit knowledge is also embodied in cognitive skills (Leonard & Sensiper, 1998). While explicit knowledge is easily exploitable, tacit knowledge is difficult to be extracted without the consent of the knowledge owner. Tacit knowledge is one of the strengths that an organization has that is more difficult to transfer or copy (Noteboom, 1993). In the resource-based theory, Hisrich et al. (2008) further highlight that in order for organizations to create unique resources which are rare, valuable, and non-immitigable; it has to exploit their internal knowledge. Many organizations in Kenya make use of intelligent solutions and business analytics to find new insights into their business processes and performance. Such insights are extracted through creativity and innovative methods to generate and gather large amounts of information about their clients, service providers, competitors, processes, procedures practices, and measures to produce substantial value. This has created a need for finding a suitable approach to tacit Knowledge sharing. This paper critically analyzes the deterrents of tacit knowledge sharing on Organization competitiveness. The study will also establish an understanding of how organizations can more easily share knowledge that will increase its performance, driven by an understanding of leveraging tacit knowledge.