Retaining Knowledge in Smaller Building and Construction Firms

The purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of how SMEs retain critical knowledge. Against the background of the underdeveloped body of knowledge regarding knowledge retention, the authors selected an explorative (qualitative) research approach. More precisely, they conducted semi-structured interviews with organization members (i.e. executive and regular staff) of five Austrian SMEs operating in the building and construction industry. This study provides fresh insights into knowledge retention in SMEs. The findings advance the limited understanding of knowledge retention in general and regarding SMEs. They also contribute to the further development of the study of knowledge management in the building and construction sector. Based on the study's findings the authors derive suitable measures to better manage the process of knowledge retention in SMEs. These measures may be useful for SMEs operating in other industries as well.</p

From entrepreneur to big player: A case study of a software company in Taiwan

[[abstract]]The software industry faces drastic changes in technology and business operations. The research structure of this study is based on the business model for software industries proposed by Rajala in 2003. The researcher employed an ex post facto research design to conduct a case study of the Galaxy Software Service Co., a company that is representative of the software industry in Taiwan. The main research goal of this study is to explore how this particular company developed into a large software company in the Taiwanese software sector, which is characterized by a prevalence of small- and medium-sized businesses, over a period of 25 years. This study employs a case study design and relies on in-depth participation and interviews to acquire a complete data set of the company’s internal operations. The evolution of the business model from the company’s inception until the present day has been divided into four phases: the entrepreneur phase, the growth phase, the stable phase, and the innovative breakthrough phase. The company developed into a major player in the software industry for 3 reasons: it has always insisted on a product differentiation strategy based on the sole reliance on software products, it started out as a software products dealer and gradually developed its own research and development capability, and it built a large-scale project management capability and received CMMI certification. These factors make the company stand out from other System Integrated businesses in the Taiwanese software sector offering both hardware and software products.[[notice]]補正完畢[[booktype]]紙