Knowledge Management Practices for Sustainable Supply Chain Management: A Challenge for Business Education

Tomas Cherkos Kassaneh, Ettore Bolisani and Juan-Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro
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Tomas Cherkos Kassaneh: Department of Management and Engineering, Università degli Studi di Padova, 36100 Vicenza, Italy
Ettore Bolisani: Department of Management and Engineering, Università degli Studi di Padova, 36100 Vicenza, Italy
Juan-Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro: Faculty of Business Sciences, Technical University of Cartagena, 30201 Cartagena, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: In the last decades, business competition has been increasingly among supply chains (SCs) rather than individual firms. Today, considering the challenges of environmental, social, and economic sustainability, it is becoming even more vital to coordinate and co-manage company resources, activities, and innovative efforts at the SC level. Consequently, knowledge, which is a critical resource for companies, needs to be managed properly not only in single firms but also across SCs. For the education of business managers, this implies a double challenge: first, to make students and future executives become aware of the knowledge management (KM) practices that can be adopted; second, to facilitate the assimilation of these practices for the effective management of SCs, to ensure higher economic and environmentally sustainable performances. Standard definitions and classifications can be of great help, but the current studies are very fragmented. This study contributes by exploring the literature and examining the KM practices that are proposed and defined by the different authors. A systematic review and a descriptive analysis of selected papers showed the trend and focus of papers in the KM and SC fields. In addition, based on the definitions and classifications drawn from the literature, this paper discusses a possible systematization of the key KM practices in SCs. The major contribution of this paper is the effort of re-definition and re-classification of KM practices and their potential importance for effective and sustainable SC management. This analysis can be especially useful for organizing KM courses targeted to current and future business managers.

Keywords: knowledge management; business education; KM courses; KM practices; literature survey; classification; supply chain management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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