Competiveness from contextualisation of supply chain knowledge

Abstract

This paper provides a discussion about the need of a continuous contextualisation of knowledge practices in organisations. Also, a proposal of a knowledge representation to contextualize and diagnose supply chain knowledge is presented. The proposed knowledge representation is a codification to incorporate context in a way that some form of diagnosis of supply chain practices can be carried out, which could reveal possible favourable and unfavourable effects of practices in a supply chain. In addition, this paper has been constructed in Excel® as a prototype, with the aim of being used in workplaces to support decisions making in SMEs supply chains. For this investigation, a number of best practices have been analysed. Also, focus groups and individual interviews to operations managers, from global, small and medium enterprises, have been carried out. Subsequently, it has been possible to integrate the proposed coding representation to enable a contextualisation and diagnosis of supply chain knowledge.