Processo de gestão do conhecimento nas pequenas empresas familiares: um estudo de múltiplos casos

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand the process of knowledge management in the small family business participants of the Brazilian Association of Industries and Suppliers (Unindústria), a network organization based in Erechim, State of Rio Grande do Sul. The study has proposed to identify and describe the processes and practices of acquisition, use, distribution and storage of knowledge and, subsequently, to describe it. For such aim, knowledge management is considered to be based on structured practices and processes, made possible by the tools of information and communication technology, and the management process is formed by the acquisition, storage, distribution and use of knowledge. It is an applied social research developed at the exploratory level, which is why the research strategy used was the multiple case study and qualitative data approach. The sources of the primary data were the executives of the family companies selected for study, the documents made available and the notes of the direct observation carried out by the researcher. The data was analyzed by content analysis method and the categorical analysis technique, whose categories were defined a priori, being they acquisition, storage, distribution and use of knowledge. The results indicate that in small family businesses organizational knowledge is shaped by informality in relationships, personalization of content, dependence on individual experiences, subjectivity and internalized content in the practices of the members of the business family, represented by the set of institutionalized values and beliefs. In the aspects related to the processes of knowledge management it was possible to identify the presence of the four stages of the knowledge management process, and the acquisition facilitates the creation of tacit knowledge and development in a culture focused on learning. Storage is a stage of organizational memory formation of the knowledge developed in the previous stage, most of them stored in the memory of the members of the business family, but also socialized and shared with the workers, specially the "reliable employees", through storytelling and intergenerational coexistence. The knowledge utilization phase occurs through the established improvements and the new products creation, in an informal and individualized way. Accordingly the proposed conceptual model, it can be seen that the studied companies are in different development phases. Two of them (cases 2 and 3) show tacit knowledge prevalence, due to informal and personalized practices and processes that answer to the market’s demand, whereas in one business (case 1) it can be identified the existence of practices and processes of organizational knowledge management , the two proposed phases in the study model. It can be concluded that the knowledge management process in small family business can only be understood by observing the institutionalized practices and processes (more or less structured, according to thecompany’s characteristics and development phase), the specific characteristics around the generational coexistence of the business family members and the dynamics of sharing that are established with the internal stakeholders.