Abstract:

Nowadays, by considering this turbulent, globalized and competitive market, knowledge and its quality are essential for success and effectiveness of organizations. To expand effectiveness, knowledge acquisition and absorption must be managed to enhance knowledge quality. In order to be prosperous and come out with better goods and services a high level of knowledge quality is needed.

Quality is not a new concept. It has been an issue for all companies to obtain high quality products and services. Obviously, it increases the efficiency as well as the effectiveness of a company. By emergence of information systems (IS) that involved all entities of a company, subsequently the concept of quality were expanded to “data and information” as well (Nelson et al., 2005). By virtue of this, knowledge quality as an obscure concept emerged. By considering the fact that knowledge is the main resource of a company, its effectiveness is contingent upon quality (Yu et al., 2007). Therefore, research on this context is needed to investigate all factors that are relevant in having a high standard of knowledge quality.

Moreover, the higher the degree of knowledge quality in business setting, the lesser would it be the costs involved in production and procurement. Whenever qualified knowledge is provided, it has an intense potential for higher income and increased sells. It is likely that a “knowledge repository” would be regarded as a burden from which a company would not take advantage of it because the quality level of that knowledge repository is not met. However a qualified knowledge (superior standard of knowledge quality) facilitates the process of decision making consequently increases organizational performance.

SMEs as small knowledge groups with high level of flexibility and robustness can face these issues and challenges through their knowledge acquisition capabilities as well as sharing behavior. However, the desired output is ensured if the company/organization are benefiting from a high standard of knowledge quality.

This research investigates the new construct of “knowledge quality” amongst SMEs in Iran. Initially by delineating the main dimensions of knowledge quality which are “intrinsic knowledge quality, contextual knowledge quality, and actionable knowledge quality” (Yoo, Vonderembse, and Ragu-Nathan, 2011) and examining the essential antecedents (requirements) of knowledge quality which are “functional diversity, absorptive capacity, and knowledge networks” (Yoo, Vonderembse, and Ragu-Nathan, 2011). Apart from examining the aforementioned concepts, the study examines the relation between knowledge quality and innovation. Data are reaped from questionnaire issued to SMEs inside industrial parks of Tehran city (capital of Iran) and descriptive statistics, frequency statistics as well as regression analysis are applied.

Keywords:

Knowledge quality, SMEs, Iran.