KM practices notions, definitions, and classifications In this section, after a thorough reading of the selected papers and analysing the important contents, it is highlighted that KM practices are defined and categorized by different authors in a fragmented way, and that an effort of systematization is necessary for several reasons. First, having a list or a sort of “reference catalogue” of KM practices is important for managers and executives, at least when they are aware of their company’s needs to implement KM programs, methods, or technologies, or when their company is asked to adopt these practices as a request of their leading business partners (suppliers or customers). In addition, a clear comprehension of KM practices and their characteristics is also important for business education and training: to design KM courses in business – both for internal practice and also to manage inter-firm relationships – a reference definition of KM practice and a consistent classification are also essential. This is greatly important for helping students and future executives to select and apply the proper practice in the different practical situations they will face in their profession. While, as was shown in the previous section, it can be affirmed that the literature is increasingly putting an emphasis on the application of KM in SCs, a significant limitation is that many different notions and categorizations regarding KM practices are proposed, both at intra- and inter-firm level. Because of this issue, it was also included, in the analysis, some important papers which have discussed KM practices even not under an inter-firm or SC perspective. According to some scholars (Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxx, 2012; X. Xxxxxxx, 2016; X. Xxxxxxx et al., 2017; X. X. Xxxxxxx et al., 2015), KM practices are generically defined as a set of organizational and managerial activities intended to achieve organizational goals through efficient and effective management of a firm’s knowledge resources. Xxxxxxxxxx et al. (Xxxxxxxxxx et al., 2017) and Xxxxxxxxx et al. (Xxxxxxxxx et al., 2015) define KM practices as a group of methods and techniques for supporting KM development. Some authors define KM practices as enablers (Xxxxx et al., 2015) or critical success factors for KM (Xxx et al., 2008; Xxxx et al., 2009). Others (Xxxxx et al., 2016; Xxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxxx, 2018; Khyzer Xxx Xxxx et al., 2018) simply consider KM practices as the same of generic KM processes (like knowledge creation, sharing, applicatio...
KM practices. Identification of lists of practices Apart from the analyses of the different notions, definitions, and classifications of KM practices, based on the content analysis of these studies, different KM practices are identified in general and those mainly used or proposed for application to inter-firm relations in SCs are characterised by highlighting their importance. An initial draft list of more than 57 KM-related practices are identified and sent to some KM experts (details in section 3.2) for their evaluation and feedback concerning the relevance to the application in inter-firm relationships in SCs and eliminate substantial replications. These findings are summarised and presented later, along with the newly proposed categorization of KM practices, in the following chapter in section 3.2.
