Knowledge Management Within the Context of Organizational Innovation

Introduction

The production capacity of the enterprises is increasing day by day, and so their internal and external knowledge sources are increasing too. At this point, knowledge is a decisive element of social and economic activities, which is very important for all areas (especially for businesses) (Dong, 2017; Lee & Kim, 2001). Considering that knowledge is an important asset for all institutions and organizations, it is understood that Knowledge Management (KM) is also important in growing enterprises. The main purpose of the KM is to provide easy access and management of the information source for the institutions and thus to create value by taking the right decisions. KM is a systematic whole of the human, technology, process and organizational structure of an organization in order to add value. This greatly affects the operation efficiency of the enterprise (Grudin, 2006a; Grudin, 2006b). The American Production and Quality Center define knowledge management as systematic approaches to ensure the spread of knowledge and creation of value at the right time and to the right person (Buckman, 2004: 17). Knowledge management is a discipline that updates the information capacity that is constantly increasing in the organizational environment, makes the information available, identifies the processes necessary to reach the required information and enables the necessary information to be shared with the company employees (Harrison and Kessels, 2004: 39).

Nevertheless, the sustainable competitive advantage of growing enterprises should be ensured. This is only possible through the management of knowledge in the context of organizational innovation by creating technology infrastructure in enterprises and effectively using this technology. Obtaining/collecting, storing, reusing (when it is needed) and managing the information resources of the institutions is very important in terms of managing the institutions more efficient and with high performance. This process significantly increases the efficiency and efficiency of institutions in today's business activities (Zhao et al., 2012; Oun et al., 2016).

KM enables the organization to learn and adapt to its changing environment to minimize time and cost in service production, and consequently to achieve competitive advantage. Since KM has a decisive impact on the business performance and innovation process at different stages and requires a different KM concept, enterprises should integrate innovation selection activities into KM processes (Cormican & O'Sullivan, 2003; Brahma & Mishra, 2015; Jordão & Novas, 2017). Innovation is the development and implementation of a new idea, product or process. The issue of innovation is a wider concept than the invention of any idea. Because the invention refers to the physical output of either a physical product or a physical system and excludes improvements called routine innovations. Therefore, innovation should be understood not only as product and technology innovation but also as a thought accepted by the enterprises in the broad sense. When this idea is adopted, business processes will be renewed through innovative philosophy within the company, and thus, the emergence of new products will be easier (Iraz, 2004; Topal and Kurt, 2004). Innovation is an issue that can be used or applied in almost all areas, and be allowed to provide new solutions to new demands, needs, and problems. It aims to performance and efficiency for the organization or community. At this point, all technology-based innovations so far can be considered in this context. In addition, innovation at the level of organizational behavior leads to an increase in performance of important factors such as productivity, quality, competition, and market share of an institution/organization (Seker, 2014). In order to maximize profitability in the innovation process, as a central link in the innovation process and to increase the internal growth and competitiveness of enterprises, enterprises with technical infrastructure should base their innovation processes based on KM. However, as a discipline, method, and practice aiming at benefiting from information sources, it can positively affect the production and organizational performance of knowledge, store information at the organizational level, and make it usable and safely shareable if necessary (Cormican & O'Sullivan, 2003; Brahma & Mishra, 2015; Jordão & Novas, 2017).