Abstract:
The increasing importance of innovation as a factor in the effectiveness and competitiveness
of companies makes them pay special attention to the processes of obtaining
and using knowledge that require special management. International companies, being
innovatively active for expansion, are a special subject of knowledge management (KM).
In such companies, KM has significant specific features related to their structure, which
includes foreign subsidiaries, and the nature of their activities, covering different national
markets. Due to the specifics of such companies, they widely use information
technology in management and, in particular, use special information tools for KM.
The research is aimed to characterize the specific features of KM in international companies
and to provide the rationale behind using new information tools for KM, which
can be used to improve the effectiveness of innovation.
The main focus of the paper is on the specific features of KM in international companies,
taking into account their structure and nature of activities, namely: 1) specific features
related to the content of the KM, taking into account the number of subsidiaries, the
scale of activities, the complexity of tasks, etc.; comparison of the models of internalization
and externalization in obtaining new knowledge by companies; 2) specific features
related to the internal environment (involvement of all levels of management,
multicultural environment, creation of communities of intensive knowledge); 3) specific
features related to the external environment, covering interaction with consumers, partners
and authorities of different countries; 4) specific features related to the innovative
activity (distribution of powers between the parent company and subsidiaries, coordination
of research and development (R&D), organization of innovation processes). The
global approach of international companies to the development of innovations is substantiated,
which determines the content of KM, as well as the need to create a KM
system, part of which is information tools. Their improvement allows for enhancing the
quality of KM and the effectiveness of innovation. In terms of KM in an international
company, the purpose of such information tools as an R&D management information
system, a single innovation management platform, a tool for formalizing knowledge,
and a corporate knowledge base, is determined. In the future, it is expected to study
the effects of the proposed tools, highlight the problems of their introduction and operation,
as well as a set of measures to overcome these problems.
