A growing number of organizations are facing political uncertainty, a knowledge-based economy with heterogeneous development, and technological upheavals that not only pose ethical and social challenges but also demand new business models and ways to maintain competitiveness. Many of these organisations operate in underdeveloped regions, geographically isolated areas, rural communities, conflict zones, post-disaster environments, or informal settlements. Others, like NGOs, operate in sectors with a lack of financial resources. These entrepreneurial contexts share characteristics such as financial constraints, difficulties in accessing and applying technologies, and a shortage of skilled workers. Organisations operating in these contexts must learn to innovate and remain globally competitive despite challenging conditions.
Given limited resources, institutional frameworks, and other uncertainties in today's world, companies should strive to make better use of their knowledge. Targeted and strategic KM enables organizations to maximize the value of their relevant knowledge. Research has shown that KM can mitigate the disadvantages associated with financial and technological constraints. In this sense, it might represent a strategic organisational capability that supports innovation, strengthens resilience, and fosters organisational learning.
Empirical evidence from different contexts supports the critical role of KM in this regard. Regarding innovation, KM practices have been associated with higher innovation performance in firms from Brazil and China. In terms of resilience, studies suggest that organisational resilience can be reinforced through knowledge-based resources and capabilities, including dynamic capabilities in Indonesian firms, the joint action of intellectual capital and generative AI in Turkish organisations, and knowledge transfer, integration, and sharing mechanisms in emergency management systems in China. Likewise, organisational learning has been linked to intellectual capital and knowledge process capability in Taiwanese firms. KM has also proven to be very beneficial for small and medium-sized enterprises and their development. When operating under constraints, it is crucial to understand the qualities of available resources, including knowledge, as it is not automatically an intrinsic asset. Against this backdrop, discussing risks related to knowledge is relevant, allowing the organisation to examine knowledge from both a positive and a negative perspective, which can lead to new ways of thinking and novel solutions for leveraging knowledge.
Although KM has become an established field in recent years, the focus of studies remains on relatively stable and well-institutionalized environments, i.e., developed economies and mature organizational environments. Contexts characterized by institutional weaknesses or resource constraints are comparatively under-researched, although emerging findings suggest that KM could play a crucial role in overcoming such constraints through mechanisms such as tinkering, socialization, and knowledge-sharing routines. Since SMEs constitute the majority of businesses in all economies, and approximately 61 percent of SMEs are from emerging economies, there is a significant need for more context-sensitive KM research that examines the roles KM can play in contexts characterized by resource and institutional scarcity.
This special issue aims to deepen the understanding of KM in contexts with limited resources and institutional frameworks. It seeks to identify mechanisms, capabilities, and theoretical perspectives through which KM enables organisational development and resilience despite such conditions. It welcomes the application or proposal of novel methodological approaches for investigating KM phenomena in such environments. By promoting context-sensitive research from underrepresented areas, this special issue aims to generate both theoretical and practical contributions that help to reduce the existing gap between established and underrepresented contexts.
This Special Issue welcomes a wide range of contributions, including conceptual papers, literature reviews, empirical studies, comparative and cross-country studies, theory-building research, practice-oriented studies, and methodological contributions, that advance understanding of KM in contexts characterised by resource and institutional constraints.