The use of knowledge management by German innovators

The purpose of this paper is to uncover factors that influence a firm's decision to implement knowledge management practices. The focus is on knowledge management practices implemented to increase collaboration on innovation activities between actors within a firm.

Empirical analysis (probit estimations) of survey data on over 1,500 innovative German firms from the Mannheim Innovation Panel of 2003.

The paper finds that an innovation strategy targeted at consumers and continuous R&D activities are positively related to knowledge management usage by innovative German firms. In addition, more general characteristics like the size and the industry of a firm also influence the decision to use knowledge management.

Given data restrictions the paper only analyses the collaborative aspects of knowledge management in firms. Future research should also take into account knowledge transfer, creativity, storage efforts in firms and IT related aspects of knowledge management and investigate the determinants of and complementarities between all of these different techniques. The paper is limited in both the time period it analyses and regional scope. Further research is necessary to investigate whether the results also hold for other countries and other periods.

The analysis in this paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating the determinants of firms' decisions to engage in knowledge management activities using a large‐scale survey of firms from a variety of different industries. The data used grant a unique insight into the innovation activities of firms and knowledge management approaches connected to these activities.