Dzuraidah Abd Wahab

Exploring the relation between organizational learning and knowledge management for improving performance

In the uncertainty environment with rapid changes in the knowledge economy, organizations should try more than before for survival and remain competitive. Learning faster than the competitors is one of the best ways to remain in the condition for organizations. Current knowledge, needed knowledge and activities that enable firms to do or not, determines organizational success and failure. Knowledge is able to integrate important work in different fields such as accounting, economics, entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, philosophy, marketing, sociology and strategy. So, nowadays (enormous of scholars and managers have tendency) to establish organizational learning and knowledge management. In the article, knowledge management and organizational learning is explained with a wide variety of definitions; afterward, the relation between these concepts and among them and performance is explained. At the end, by using literature of knowledge management a comprehensive model about knowledge management is proposed; furthermore the relation between knowledge management and performance is presented in the model. Then by utilizing the correlation between organizational learning and knowledge management the model is developed. So, final model illustrates the relation among organizational learning, knowledge management and performance.

Managing change in lean manufacturing implementation

Lean manufacturing is a proven approach for success in manufacturing industry. However, several organisations failed in their attempt to implement lean manufacturing system. The transition to lean manufacturing requires radical change which involves a total reshaping of purpose, system and culture of the organisation. This paper presents an investigation on the influence of organisational change to the transition of lean manufacturing. This study used an explanatory mixed method approach, which began with survey distribution, and then the general picture was further refined by conducting in-depth interviews on Malaysia automotive companies. The results revealed that company which emphasized on leadership and management, change agent system, effective communication, worker’s empowerment through training and team development, and also lean review system experienced smooth transition to lean manufacturing system. Failure to recognize the required organisational changes to adapt lean manufacturing system will hinder the long-term benefits of the organisation.

Practice of CSFs for the pre-development process in new product innovation processes at SMEs: Questionnaire development

Today, many organizations have realized an important of pre-development process in order to compete with competitor through drastically introduce new product in the market. In view of that, understanding critical factors that contribute to successful pre-development process implementation is becoming the more important. However, most of past studies were conducted in large organization, very little has been done in small and medium enterprise (SMEs). SMEs have certain limitation in terms of their financial, human, technical, and resources that could hinder their progress towards implementing pre-development process. This paper reviews and analyses CSFs developed by previous authors in order to propose a set of CSFs which were thought to be critical for SMEs. After that the questionnaire developed in this study will be analysis using factors analysis and reliability test in order to examine construct validity and reliability. An initial draft of the questionnaire was developed based on the literature. The questionnaire was pre-tested by academicians and industry practitioners. After that the questionnaire was piloted at 55 food and beverage manufacturing SMEs to check its reliability by using Cronbach’s alpha value. In addition, principle component analysis was carried out to test the construct validity. All the factors in the survey instrument had a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of more than 0.7 which may be considered satisfactory. Through factor analysis, all KMO values were found above acceptable value of 0.50. All Bartlett’s Test in this analysis was found to be significant. Therefore the instrument is valid and reliable and considered as satisfactory. Nine CSFs, which are believed suitable for SMEs have been proposed in this paper. Through systematic identification and validation, it is hope that the set of CSFs could be used as guides for SMEs to implement pre-development process successfully.