Knowledge Management and the UK car Manufacturing Industry: Preliminary Study Survey.

Knowledge Management (KM) has grown and gathered importance in the field of business and management, particularly in Europe and North America, as well as in the UK. Despite much empirical research into KM in other industries, such as pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, financial and consulting services industries, little is known about the practice of KM in the UK car manufacturing industry. This paper presents the findings of a preliminary study survey conducted at 13 UK car manufacturing organisations, which aimed to redress this imbalance with the main concern being to provide a sound level of understanding and an overview of KM practices within the industry. Given that the field of KM is very diverse, with a wide variety of approaches, the primary objectives of the preliminary study were substantial in order to obtain a sound understanding of the UK car manufacturing industry experience of KM. The industry presents itself in today's knowledge economy, includes large organisations in terms of number of employees and turnover and operates in a highly competitive environment that is driven, to a significant degree, by innovation and continuous improvement. It would be significant, therefore, to identify the incidence of certain KM practices and behaviours in such an industry. While the findings provided a good level of understanding of KM practices that were investigated through the awareness, familiarity, contemplation and implementation of KM, they also managed to identify the proportion of KM adopters and non-KM adopters within UK car manufacturing industry. Building on these distinctions, a theoretical framework named 'STAGES: Towards a KM Implementation Roadmap' was developed that enabled an understanding of the stages of KM practices achieved by all respondents and also further developed comprehension of organisational experiences in KM. The paper concludes with the results, indicating that KM is both recognised and practiced in the UK car manufacturing industry, although, a wide variety of practices were identified under the overall KM label. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]