Knowledge management strategies and their contribution to small and medium enterprises sales growth: A case of hospitality industry in Nakuru Town

Abstract

Despite the many individual studies on various knowledge management initiatives in large organisations, the perception of knowledge management practices and developments in Small and Medium enterprises suffers certain drawbacks. Small and Medium enterprises generally lack a proper understanding of knowledge management strategies in terms of key concepts. As such, there is paucity of information on the effect of different knowledge management strategies used by small firms on sales growth in the hospitality industry in Kenya. The study sought to determine the effect of knowledge management strategies on sales growth in the hospitality industry. Specific objectives included determining the effect the three knowledge management strategies on small and medium business sales growth. A cross-sectional survey research design was used for this study and a sample was conducted on all the 39 targeted respondents. A questionnaire with structured and unstructured questions was used to collect primary data from all the 39 top managers and supervisors of selected hospitality businesses since they are the key decision makers. Descriptive and regression analysis were used to analyze the data with the help of SPSS version 21. The findings from this study indicate that, though knowledge management strategies were used to a greater extent among the small businesses, they did not significantly contribute to sales growth in the hospitality industry. This implies that the relationship was not significant because the use of the knowledge management strategies did not fully actualize the intended sales growth in the hospitality businesses. The results of this study have implications in enhancing the growth of SME’s in Kenya and fostering further research.