Knowledge Management and Software Development Organization

Software development organization (SDO) is a kind of knowledge-intensive business and their large majority is small and medium enterprise (SME) facing similar challenges of large ones. The diversity and complexity of the SDO environment makes knowledge the fundamental element in the software development process, which strengthens the importance of an effective knowledge management process. The software development process involves multidisciplinary teams, and the various working meetings that occur during a project are conducive to generate and share a lot of knowledge, in particular tacit knowledge. The use of a knowledge management process that enables to manage tacit knowledge will define the difference between a good SDO performance and the best SDO performance. This chapter aims to present an exploratory study based on literature review, with the aim of identifying the main challenge of knowledge management in the SDO context. The authors also aim to address some new research directions.

Knowledge of Management Tools and Systems in SMEs

The chapter deals with knowledge management principles and their implication to knowledge in management represented by contemporary sophisticated management tools and systems. The most important management branches and methods, tools and systems, generally considered as very helpful for professional business operating, are presented. Further research results of management tools knowledge in contemporary enterprises are presented impacting the need of education and knowledge transfer in management responsible positions. The need of management knowledge for the competitiveness of enterprises is accented. Business and competitive intelligence as media for competitiveness are introduced. In the last part of the chapter, a model of the knowledge management system applicable in SMEs is suggested. The purpose of the chapter is to make the reader familiar with some of the most important management tools, methods and systems and suggest principles for an easy and effective knowledge management system in the enterprise.

Appropriate Leadership Style in Knowledge Management System (KMS) Building

Building up a knowledge management system is a commonly arising challenge in managing organizations. Leaders need to change their leadership style in order for their organization to be successful, in accordance with the requirements of building and operating a knowledge management system. The aim of this chapter is to sketch the necessity of the change and the right leaders' behavior. The author shows the relationships residing in the background of the elements that are in close connection with the suitable leadership style: EQ, competence, organizational culture, trust, communication, and employees' commitment and satisfaction. During this chapter readers will be led logically across the connections of the above-mentioned elements and, at the end, a figure summarizing the connections closes the chapter.

Knowledge Management and Its Approaches

This chapter briefly covers the basics and definitions of knowledge and knowledge management, the connection between KM and communication, its Hungarian and international development and tendencies in the past years and the so called KM generations. The chapter's goal is to show how and why the support and appreciation of knowledge (which almost exists since the beginning of humankind) developed into a system. Successful management of companies using KM systems bring to the surface a new breed of organization operating models operating with intelligent solutions, which are manifold, may be structured in a variable way, and are specifically unique in the light of these knowledge-intensive services.

Managing Collective Knowledge at a Small Business Group (VID Group)

Personal knowledge is the construction of the individual. It is the context of factual knowledge and experience. Collective work, thinking, writing requires adaptation, adjustment, coordination. The VID SME Group demonstrates the significance of collective knowledge, as the group is dominated by diversity, manifold ordering, but also by the maintenance and coordination of plurality. The present paper provides the framework and the praxis of the plural management of collective knowledge, hence allowing for the attainment of the approach and thinking lying therein. Following an overview of the background of the adopted systemic, pluralistic approach, the paper gives insight into the VID Group's systemically, corporally-corporately and textually ordered architecture, into its management and control praxes of collective knowledge, but it also presents the business group's principles, tasks, networks, its functional ordering and connections.

From Giftedness to Compliance

This chapter provides a survey of methods, utilizing the human capital that helps on one hand identify the talents or the shortage of it; specify the developmental dynamics of a skill or competence, and gives help to the prognosis of successful assessment forms by following the development progress. The authors intend to suggest best practices that provide to find and complete the best possible mission for SMEs and employees as well by taking into consideration the progressive tools of knowledge management. The chapter introduces the methods of measuring talent and capability existence or shortage, the measurement possibilities of hidden potentials and the utilization of these among SMEs' routine. Authors pay special attention to the employees maturing progress on higher levels of working experience where the talent possibly manifests as utilized knowledge. Methods will be introduced that provide this manifestation to give best practices to assessment for a better prediction.

Best Practice Model Tools and Methods for Developing KM Systems

This chapter focuses on an experience based presentation of the parameters that determine organizational culture, and the impact that basic interrelationships among such parametric factors exercise on the elaboration of KM; the timing and the sort of KM structure, configuration that is feasible to make KM an approved and successful management function within a corporate structure; the possibility and the proper timing of the elaboration of KM through corporate strategic approach i.e. starting from above (decision of the senior management), and the efficiency of a solution initiated from below (by the members of the organization). This chapter will describe some practice-proven solutions, such as: the application of the problem solution method named action research that could be expedient in the implementation of KM in certain cases, and times and situations where the application of the “sandwich method” could be expedient. Also, this chapter describes knowledge transfer experiences that facilitate the recognition of the “capillary model”, its substance and scope of utilization.

Knowledge-Sharing Is One of the Guarantees of Success in Family Businesses

In this chapter a summary of the role family businesses play in the economy will be presented along with one of the main issues of family businesses in Hungary that is succession. Innovation as one of the most important factors of successful family businesses and the organizational culture supporting innovation will also be analysed. Some of the most relevant findings of a research study conducted in Hungary in 2015 will be given. The most significant components of knowledge sharing in SMEs especially in family businesses have been identified. The research results are based on over 300 questionnaires. The following questions have been answered: 1) What is the most decisive factor of choosing between cooperation and competition? 2) Is it possible that family businesses are able to respond to changes and as a result are they innovative? and 3) Is the organizational culture necessary for tacit knowledge sharing present in family businesses?

Intercultural Knowledge Transfer in Teams

The following chapter is dedicated to knowledge management, whereby the focus is on the transfer of relevant knowledge in an intercultural team. The purpose of this study was to empirically examine, how an intercultural team deals with the cultural diversity of its members and how it influences the knowledge transfer. The research object was the intercultural team of the research institute Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre at the Münster University of Applied Sciences (MUAS) in Germany. Ten guided interviews were conducted with ten employees of ten different nationalities. As the investigation has shown, the processes of knowledge transfer within the team of the research centre are not standardized. The actual transfer of knowledge occurs between team members on a personal level during intercultural communication in a setting of provided framework conditions. The team's cultural diversity is able not only to transfer but also to generate new knowledge. Intercultural competence in a provided framework is the crucial factor for successful cross-cultural knowledge transfer.

Product Knowledge Management in Small Manufacturing Enterprises

An important issue present in the most of manufacturing systems, and become worse in SMEs, is the systematic management of the huge amount of unstructured information generated about products, from their design to their disposal. The aim of this chapter is to define a framework to manage such kind of data, overcoming the actual issues of the meaningless and the unstructured nature of generated information. To this aim, a knowledge management platform is proposed, both to store product information with semantic enrichment and to retrieve product information by means of a new similarity index. Such platform is based on the one hand on a non-relational data management system and on the other hand on a set of manufacturing ontologies. An example of the potentiality of the proposed framework is shown in the domain of telecommunication filter manufacturing.