Corporate amnesia in the micro business environment

Corporate amnesia is a phenomenon that has persistently threatened the livelihood of business organizations and their success in commercial activity. Several substantial studies on this observable fact have been undertaken with focus primarily aimed at the large corporations and the small to medium sized organizations. This vulnerability is however evermore present and significant within the smaller of businesses. In the micro enterprise, the impact of corporate amnesia is realized when even a single member of staff is absent for any lengthy period of time or vacates their post altogether. With more than 80% of the workforce in the US and separately in the UK directly engaged within a micro enterprise, the competitive benefits that can potentially be realized by addressing corporate amnesia is significant. This paper will identify the main causes of corporate amnesia within the micro business environment and propose a suitable framework for the enterprise to effectively facilitate the adoption of Knowledge Management and realize the associated competitive benefits

Multinationals in their communities: A social capital approach to corporate citizenship projects

The objectives of this research are to provide new ways of thinking about and measuring the extent and effectiveness of multinational company efforts to contribute to society via their corporate citizenship (CC) (or corporate social responsibility - CSR) programmes. It uses as its method of analysis the emerging literature relating to the theory and measurement of social capital. The paper summarises the findings of a forthcoming book (from Palgrave, 2007). We begin by discussing the concept of corporate citizenship in the context of the multinational. We go on to introduce the concept of social capital employed in the study. Next we summarise our case study evidence with cases from Anglo American and Diageo. Following this, we review our statistical and econometric analysis which maps the community engagements of UK multinationals in South Africa, US multinationals in Mexico and EU multinationals in Poland. We demonstrate the usefulness for analysis of social capital thinking in this context and make suggestions for future work.Social capital; Corporate citizenship; Corporate Social Responsibility; Multinational companies.

Knowledge management for the micro enterprise: a taxonomy

oai:repository.mdx.ac.uk:y85yyKnowledge Management Systems enhance innovation, increase operational efficiency, and improve decision-making in business organisations. The administrative and resource overheads required to implement and maintain such systems, however, inherently exclude the smallest of firms from reaping these benefits. This paper aims to identify, evaluate, and summarize the distribution of research on knowledge management and supporting systems across business size classifications with a particular focus on micro-enterprises. It also seeks to establish if existing knowledge management models, practices, and systems have invested due consideration in their design to cater for the limited resources typically found in the micro-enterprise. It contributes new insight into the applicability of knowledge management systems to micro-enterprises and stimulates a possible re-think of how such systems can cater for the specific constraints of this prolific business type. This taxonomy provides a thorough analysis of 168 research papers from a total of 10511 papers published in reputable conference proceedings since 2012. It focuses on key knowledge management themes covered, including the size of the enterprise, the adoption challenges, the potential benefits, the technologies used, and the aspects of the knowledge management cycle that are being employed. Furthermore, it draws on this analysis to highlight the appropriateness of existing knowledge management systems to the distinctive risk and opportunity characteristics of the micro-enterprise

Organisational forgetting:The food safety risk associated with unintentional knowledge loss

Background: Organisational forgetting is associated with unintentional knowledge loss that makes both food businesses and consumers vulnerable to a food safety incident. It is essential that food businesses have strategies and processes in place to minimise unintentional knowledge loss to ensure that essential knowledge is retained, maintained and stays valid. Scope and approach: The aim of this paper is to consider the risk associated with unintentional food safety knowledge loss at individual, organisational and inter-organisational levels. The research approach employed was to undertake a review of existing literature to frame the conceptual research. Screening of both academic and grey literature demonstrated a distinct knowledge gap i.e., there is limited previous research considering the concept of unintentional knowledge loss and its impact on food safety. Case study examples explore the academic theory in more depth. Key findings and conclusions: Three aspects of organisational forgetting are considered in the context of food safety: organisational amnesia, organisational memory decay, and supply chain déjà-vu. The first two aspects operate at the organisational level and the third at the supply chain level. To overcome the risk of unintentional loss, organisational and interorganisational knowledge needs to be effectively mapped and a knowledge retention policy needs to be developed, implemented and maintained that addresses all types of organisational and interorganisational knowledge, but especially food safety knowledge

Organizational Amnesia: the Barrier of Value Creation and Organizational Performance in Small and Medium Sized Enterprise

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia has an essential role in economic. Their existence appeared significant when the economy crisis in Asia 1997 and the world economic crisis in 2008. Therefore the existence of SMEs for business and society are imperative, so their sustainability should be maintained through value creation and performance. However, unlike the large companies that typically have resources to maintain information and their knowledge extensively, SME fall into lack of resources that driving them on amnesia consistently (S J Hall & De Raffaele, 2013) and it predispose the ability to create value and company's performance. This paper aims to describe the existence of organizational amnesia (OA) as the failure of organizations to learn reliably at the organizational level (Kransdorff, 1998). This phenomenon is proposed affect SMEs creating value and organizational performance. Some conclusion and future research has been recommended

‘I Don’t Lend Money; It Causes Amnesia!’ Money, Culture and Ethics.

Christian leaders seek to be ethical people and make ethical decisions, but often the ethical dilemmas a leader must face do not have clear-cut answers. Ethical dilemmas can be even more troubling when they occur in a culturally diverse situation that is coupled with decisions involving financial transactions. Views of money and how to handle money are culturally influenced and may not be the same as the views of the leader, who may come from a different culture. This leads the Christian leader to ponder: When working in a culturally diverse environment, how can one tell the difference between a money-related cultural difference and an ethical infraction? The following article discusses the challenges of intercultural leadership that involve financial transactions and offers suggestions for addressing the resulting cultural and ethical questions