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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a study of knowledge management understanding and usage in small and medium knowledge-intensive enterprises. Design/methodology/approach - The study has taken an interpretitivist approach, using two knowledge-intensive South Yorkshire (England) companies as case studies, both of which are characterised by the need to process and use knowledge on a daily basis in order to remain competitive. The case studies were analysed using qualitative research methodology, composed of interviews and concept mapping, thus deriving a characterisation of understandings, perceptions and requirements of SMEs in relation to knowledge management. Findings - The study provides evidence that, while SMEs, including knowledge intensive ones, acknowledge that adequately capturing, storing, sharing and disseminating knowledge can lead to greater innovation and productivity, their managers are not prepared to invest the relatively high effort on long term knowledge management goals for which they have difficulty in establishing the added value. Thus, knowledge management activities within SMEs tend to happen in an informal way, rarely supported by purposely designed ICT systems. Research limitations/implications - This paper proposes that further studies in this field are required that focus on organisational and practical issues in order to close the gap between theoretical propositions and the reality of practice. Practical implications - The study suggests that in order to implement an appropriate knowledge management strategy in SMEs cultural, behavioural, and organisational issues need to be tackled before even considering technical issues. Originality/value - KM seems to have been successfully applied in large companies, but it is largely disregarded by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This has been attributed primarily to a lack of a formal approach to the sharing, recording, transferring, auditing and exploiting of organisational knowledge, together with a lack of utilisation of available information technologies. This paper debates these concepts from a research findings point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to study the information-seeking habits of children at an English secondary school. Data from two different research exercises were collated in order to provide an insight into how students perceived and used a range of information resources. Design/methodology/approach - In the first research exercise, groups of children from each academic year were asked to discuss a set of information resources and to rank them according to perceived usefulness. In the second, students were asked to report, throughout the school year, on the resources they used to complete homework assignments. Findings - The findings from these two exercises are best interpreted by using them to provide the answers to three questions: Which information resources did students consider to be the most useful? Which information resources did students use the most? When an information resource was referred to, how likely was it that students found it to be useful? The rankings differed considerably, depending on which question was being asked. Originality/value - The results gave an insight into how different information resources were used for different subjects. They also provide evidence of the fact that students' reliance on other people as an information source begins to decline as they get older, and there is a corresponding increase in their use of books and electronic information sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]