Enabling Organizational Learning to Contribute toward a Learning Organization: An Exploratory Case Study of Knowledge Management Practices in Taiwan's Electronics Industry

How can practices of knowledge management (KM) enable organizational learning to occur and then lead toward a learning organization? We seek the answer to this question by exploring three cases, Winbond, Worldpeace, and TSMC, chosen respectively from upstream, midstream, and downstream firms in the IC industry in Taiwan. We studied KM practices focusing on aspects of knowledge creation, storage/retrieval, transfer and application. Results showed that KM may play different enabling roles among IC designer, distributor and manufacturer. In this study it was found that IC designers may focus more on knowledge storage, while IC distributors pay more attention to knowledge application, and IC manufacturers emphasize knowledge creation.