Relationship between Knowledge Management and Market Orientation in Smes

The paper presents relationships between market orientation (MO), knowledge management (KM) and growth and development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Two basic questions are stated for this study: (1) what are the relationships between those two concepts, KM and MO, and growth of SMEs (direct or indirect), and (2) what is the direction of the relationship between KM and MO. To answer the questions, literature review was conducted. Knowledge management is defined as a process that helps enterprises to find, select, organize and transfer important information necessary for activities such as for example strategic planning and decision making. Also two main perspectives on market orientation, cultural and behavioural, underline the importance of collecting and processing information about market. Previous empirical researches confirm significant relationship between KM, MO and growth and development of enterprises. However, KM and MO are different in SMEs in comparison to large enterprises. The differences result from characteristics of SMEs such as for example: small size, informal organization structure and being close to market. Moreover, although there is correlation between KM and MO, previous studies do not indicate unequivocally the direction of the relationship between those two concepts.