Knowledge managements practices and the enchancements of customer capital: the importance of time

Résumé

Today, in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), entrepreneurs must take a more strategic perspective that is evidenced by the need to, scan the enterprise to discover how they might improve customer relations as well as promote improved knowledge management (KM) practices. However, in situations where organizations and their members face rapidly changing environments it is necessary to challenge the KM practices which have been derived from the founding entrepreneurs. These practices which may be based on explicit knowledge or on tacit knowledge in the form of processes and routines need to be challenged prior to the adoption of new knowledge by the organization. In such situations, it will be necessary to modify or even delete some knowledge in order to ensure that employees have access to the up-to-date explorative and exploitative knowledge processes necessary to maintain or enhance customer relations. The study described below examines the impact of the existence of an �open-minded context� in an organizations at time (T) on actions that concern the challenging of KM practices at time (T+1). We also examine the relationship between explorative and exploitation processes and customer relations. These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of 107 SMEs from the Spanish Telecommunications industry, using Partial Least Squares (PLS).