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Volume 5 Issue 4
Barcelona 2007
Knowledge and Life Cycle of an Organization
Zygmunt Mietlewski1 and Ryszard Walkowiak2
1Gdynia Maritime University, Gdynia, Poland
2University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, Gdynia
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Knowledge in a general sense is a system of categories, conceptual dimensions, operations, principles and procedures representing various conditions and world processes in a human brain: environmental, technical, social and cultural (Kuc 2006). However, in a narrower approach “knowledge constitutes systems of cognitive units, conceptual categories and mental procedures which simultaneously play two major functions: orientational and pragmatic” (Nosal 2002). “Knowledge is a tool which allows a human being to use gathered information efficiently” (Grudzewski 2004). Together with skills, experiences, character, attitude and behavior, it is a constituent part of competence. A competent entrepreneur is one who can use his knowledge and skills in practice. The following components of competence are also conducive to that: personal predispositions characteristic of particular actions, general (life) and specific (vocational) experience, attitudes towards work and colleagues resulting from individual motivation and organizational aims, and also other behavior determined by cultural values and norms (Kuc 2006).
The entrepreneur’s activities take various forms depending on external and internal conditions affecting the company. Moreover, organizations may be in different stages of development. Thus, the entrepreneur’s knowledge should be consistent with the life stage of a given organization.
There are four stages of an organization’s life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.
A success-oriented entrepreneur should adapt his activities to the stage of the company life cycle. Proper enterprising actions, understanding the rules of entrepreneurship and knowledge connected with it, will enable adjustment of individual actions to the life cycle of an organization and to maximize the effects of these actions, thus allowing the entrepreneur to achieve success understood as the efficient realization of the company’s aims.
The present work shows experience of experts/counselors participating in the Project Supporting restructured companies and their employees realized within the Community Initiative EQUAL. Managers of companies were supported by the authors’ model, the basis of which was equipping the entrepreneurs of micro, small, and medium companies with the knowledge necessary for efficient action.
Entrepreneurs often do not possess knowledge which is required by the company because they do not make the diagnosis of their company systematically and, as a result, they do not know at which stage of life cycle the company is. This lack of knowledge often leads to the company’s failure.
Keywords:
knowledge, life cycle of the organization
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