Competitive priorities and knowledge management: An empirical investigation of manufacturing companies in UAE

The purpose of this paper is to identify attributes of knowledge management (KM) for large and small manufacturing companies in United Arab Emirates (UAE) and to propose a process to evaluate the competitive priorities of these companies.

This research is designed by composing multi criteria decision making of KM attributes in order to identify competitive priorities of large and small manufacturing companies to achieve better customer focus. To deal with this complexity of multi criteria decision-making process, Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) method has been used in this research.

Results show that large manufacturing companies are putting more emphasis on “Know-Why” knowledge attribute in all four competitive priorities for achieving customer focus. While, small size manufacturing companies put higher weight on “Know-What” knowledge attribute by focussing on two competitive priorities (flexibility and quality).

Results are derived from a limited number of empirical data only in one country, therefore these cannot be generalized. Future research with larger samples of small and large manufacturing firms from other countries is needed.

To be competitive, manufacturing companies must reshuffle their production strategies to allow them to play a role in global knowledge-intensive market. Therefore, they must incorporate knowledge attributes as a way to achieve higher levels of performance.

This study is among the first and most exhaustive ones carried out in the small and large size firms operating in the manufacturing sector of UAE. It provides a systematic approach to identify the operational competencies and knowledge attributes being followed by large and small manufacturing companies.