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A Knowledge Management Process‐Based Approach to Support Corporate Crisis Management
Author(s) -
Ponis Stavros T.,
Koronis Epamidas
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
knowledge and process management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.341
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1099-1441
pISSN - 1092-4604
DOI - 10.1002/kpm.1390
Subject(s) - process (computing) , knowledge management , business , perspective (graphical) , crisis management , supply chain , knowledge sharing , empirical research , process management , computer science , marketing , economics , management , philosophy , epistemology , artificial intelligence , operating system
In the crisis‐prone and complex contemporary business environment, modern organisations and their supply chains, large and small, are challenged by crises more than ever. Knowledge management has been acknowledged as an important discipline able to support the management of complexity in times of crisis. However, the role of effective knowledge retrieval and sharing in the process of crisis prevention, management and survival has been relatively underexplored. In this paper, it is argued that organisational crises create additional challenges for knowledge management, mainly because complex, polymorphic and both structured and unstructured knowledge must be efficiently harnessed, processed and disseminated to the appropriate internal and external supply chain actors, under specific time constraints. In this perspective, a process‐based approach is proposed to address the knowledge management needs of organisations during a crisis and to help management in establishing the necessary risk avoidance and recovery mechanisms. Finally, the proposed methodological approach is applied in a knowledge‐intensive Greek small and medium enterprise from the pharmaceutical industry, producing empirical results, insights on knowledge pathologies during crises and relevant evaluations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.