Supply chain development as a knowledge development task

The study utilises two research streams of knowledge management – knowledge maturity models and strategies of accelerating the knowledge creation in an organisation – to understand and support the adoption of complex practices of Supply Chain Management (SCM). Generic development strategies called bottom-up, top-down and middle-up-down are derived from the theories and evaluated in two case companies representing different industries but the same development area, inventory management. The case study is organised into two parts. First, the development to date is presented in both case companies and the cases are used to identify the basic prerequisites, advantages and disadvantages of the bottom-up and top-down strategies. Second, potential development strategies for the future are analysed. The findings of the case studies suggest that the selection between different strategies is related to the cultural and organisational environments, the complexity caused by the issue itself and by climbing the knowledge maturity stages, and the relative importance of the issue to be developed. As a result the study gives guidelines to development strategy selection, especially focusing to two crucial questions: where do you expect the knowledge to be accumulated and in what form do you expect the knowledge to be stored and communicated.