Measuring Sustainability and Sustainable Knowledge Management: Presenting a Case for the Tourism Sector in Portugal

The concept of sustainable development is an increasingly relevant concept for economic growth, to improve the quality of life through nature, economy, society and the welfare of the people. The concept of sustainable development can be expanded to all forms of development and economic activities, notably tourism. The concept of sustainable development in Tourism has remained unfilled and under the influence of different approaches. Nevertheless of the different interpretations of sustainable tourism indentified in the literature review, the authors refer to a holistic perspective of sustainable development in which tourism should be seen as part of a strategy of sustainable development. Tourism is one of the most important sectors in the Portuguese economy, as it represents about 4.3% of GDP (in 2006) and absorbs 10% of employment in our country. Knowledge management is about taking the internal knowledge in people's minds (tacit) and turning it into usable knowledge (explicit) to solve problems and add value to an organization. The authors believe that knowledge management could be an important component for accelerating an organization towards sustainability. They refer in this paper the concept of sustainable knowledge management that can be better explained by linking sustainability issues into the practices of managing knowledge. The purpose of this research paper is to examine the perceptions of different stakeholders on the contribution of knowledge management towards sustainability. Primary data was obtained through a survey on perceptions of sustainable development and knowledge management of the different actors (municipalities, education institutions in the tourism and business in tourism) on the different items that will be behaved in the dimensions of the indicators for the development of the sustainability index, namely economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, institutional sustainability and socio-cultural sustainability. The methodology used is structural equations in order to verify and quantify the perceptions of the different stakeholders. The tested hypotheses were supported through empirical research, and the authors verified that the stakeholder's perceptions are that knowledge management contributes positively towards sustainability.