Exploratory Study on the Adoption of Knowledge Management Practices in Small Medium Enterprises in Resource Constrained Areas: A Case Study of the Dairy Industry in Uganda

Theodora Mwebesa Twongyirwe, Jude Lubega

2018

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed light on Knowledge Management (KM) practices in Small Medium enterprises (SMEs) in resource constrained areas. The Paper presents the results of an exploratory study investigating the adoption of KM practices in 66 enterprises across the Dairy industry located in South-western Uganda. The Methodology adopted focused on literature review to gain an in-depth understanding KM in SMEs and insight into the Dairy industry in Uganda, a structured questionnaire was used to collect information from the different stakeholders and an interview guide used to conduct interviews with various stakeholders in the firms. The results show that SMEs are falling behind large companies in developing KM practices; however all the firms showed a significant understanding of the benefits of KM. There is significantly low skills and usage of ICT in SMEs which is essential for successful implementation of KM within an organization. Web browsing, voice and SMS are the most commonly used ICT Services and the least used are ICT professional services like business intelligence tools, ERPs and Dashboards, which creates significant opportunity for development of KM tools suitable for resource constrained areas. Skills gap, informal knowledge and technological barriers where highlighted as significant barriers to implementation of KM. There is limited usage of Decision Support Systems and Data mining tools as KM Tools.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Twongyirwe T. and Lubega J. (2018). Exploratory Study on the Adoption of Knowledge Management Practices in Small Medium Enterprises in Resource Constrained Areas: A Case Study of the Dairy Industry in Uganda. In Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2018) - Volume 3: KMIS; ISBN 978-989-758-330-8, SciTePress, pages 177-185. DOI: 10.5220/0006930101770185

in Bibtex Style

@conference{kmis18,
author={Theodora Mwebesa Twongyirwe and Jude Lubega},
title={Exploratory Study on the Adoption of Knowledge Management Practices in Small Medium Enterprises in Resource Constrained Areas: A Case Study of the Dairy Industry in Uganda},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2018) - Volume 3: KMIS},
year={2018},
pages={177-185},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006930101770185},
isbn={978-989-758-330-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2018) - Volume 3: KMIS
TI - Exploratory Study on the Adoption of Knowledge Management Practices in Small Medium Enterprises in Resource Constrained Areas: A Case Study of the Dairy Industry in Uganda
SN - 978-989-758-330-8
AU - Twongyirwe T.
AU - Lubega J.
PY - 2018
SP - 177
EP - 185
DO - 10.5220/0006930101770185
PB - SciTePress