Improving World Competitiveness through Knowledge Management

Purpose - Knowledge Management (KM) world over has been extensively used to improve the performance of the organizations. Though Indian organizations are following the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) for last fifteen years, still the competitiveness of India has not been able to improve globally. Thus there is a need for the Indian organizations to implement KM along with TQM. The aim of this research is to assess the status of TQM & KM and suggest the implementation strategy of KM to improve world competitiveness of India. Tata Steel case study has been discussed for better insight of KM. Methodology/approach - This paper presents the status of TQM & KM in the Indian organizations based on 90 organizations. Findings - The literature review reveals that KM has a major bearing on the success of organizations. Based on the survey of 'Big', 'Medium', and 'Small' organizations, the KM index has been computed for each category, which is 4.07, 2.88, and 2.08 respectively out of total score of 5. It is concluded statistically based on one way ANOVA (unstacked) that weakest link among three groups of categories are 'Medium' and 'Small' groups of organizations, which affects the overall world ranking of the Indian organizations on competitiveness. Big category of organizations must take lead to develop 'Medium' and 'Small' category of organizations as far as KM is concerned. Research limitations/implications - The investigation and research findings are still exploratory. Future research can focus and study the correlation among KM, and TQM sector wise. Broadly based and larger sample size would provide better picture of KM, and TQM performance status. Originality/value - The study has been able to compute KM index among the three categories of organizations and have been able to establish the weakest link among three categories and suggest number of steps to improve KM in the organization.