Knowledge exists in the mind of people and circulates within organizations
[Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995]. For all companies knowledge management (KM)
and innovation plays an important role [Porter 2001]. Realizing the organization
of knowledge is a strategic corporate asset which has to apply to future
organizational problems [Schulttze and Stabell 2004]. Many of KM initiatives
are implemented in large companies but in the last years there is a shift
towards small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) [Fink and Ploder 2006a]
[Fink and Ploder 2006b]. SMEs need a simple framework to organize their key
knowledge processes: (1) knowledge identification, (2) knowledge acquisition, (3)
knowledge distribution and (4) knowledge preservation [Fink and Ploder 2007].
For SMEs it is necessary that the advantages of KM are clear and the implementation
is easy otherwise they will continue to focus on their traditional
way of working [Nunes et al. 2006]. Based on different research projects in the
area of KM [Fink and Ploder 2006a] in SMEs the following lack could be found
[Fink and Ploder 2007]: Austrian, German and Swiss SMEs want to use methods
for implementing KM and support this with existing software products butothers would base their methods on the organizational culture.
This paper presents results of a study that was conducted at the department of
information systems at the University of Innsbruck in winter 2006/2007 with the
aim to build a model to find out which tools/techniques are right for a special
SME depending on the organizational strategy.