Organizational Life Cycle and Strategic Knowledge Management in SMEs

Small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have the activities that lead to organizational effectiveness. One important activity is how they manage knowledge. Each stage in the firm's life cycle requires that they emphasize different knowledge managing activities. We identify four organizational stages: start-up, growth, maturity and decline/renewal. Drawing from the entrepreneurship, organizational knowledge and organizational life cycle literatures, we develop a model for knowledge management strategies that optimizes organizational effectiveness for SMEs at different phases of their life cycles. This paper builds on the knowledge-based view of the firm and suggests that SMEs can achieve sustainable competitive advantages through effectively managing their organizational knowledge. We suggest several propositions and directions for future research.