Towards an electronic knowledge management culture

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Ilidio Tomás
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.15/2993
• topic: Knowledge management; Internet; Websites; Stakeholders; Information sharing

In the last 10 years, Internet has emerged as the way to excellence to reach the main stakeholders' information needs. Focusing primarily on the information about products and services, gradually new capabilities were introduced in the corporate websites. Customers can order products and services, potential shareholders can obtain financial and non-financial information; electronic contact has contributed to minimize the operational cycle. Concepts of time and space have been strongly surpassed and new business models have emerged. While marked by connectivity, information, convergence and mobility, Knowledge Management (KM) will lead to apart from the perspective analysis, a strong and deep cultural transformation inside the companies and towards a better relation with stakeholders. Based on the top 500 companies in Portugal, this paper explores the typology of information (voluntary and non-voluntary, financial and non-financial) effectively released to stakeholders through their corporate websites. A sample of 144 companies was extracted. Most of the companies under analysis use the Internet to share information with stakeholders, some of them according to financial market regulator rules. It includes financial reports, corporate governance information, press releases, and environment and sustainability reports. Apart from that, the paper also tries to show evidence of, and underline an Electronic Knowledge Management Culture (EKMC) based on several capabilities implemented through their websites and through the effective contribution and linkage between stakeholders and companies. Size of companies and financial performance indicators seems to contribute positively to the quality and quantity of information effectively disseminated.