Entrepreneurs as knowledge leaders

Knowledge management has become one of the most discussed topics in the business literature during the last decade. It is promoted as an essential corner stone for enterprises to develop competitive advantage in rapidly changing environment. The challenge for many small enterprises is especially demanding because of their limited resources. Thus, almost all the dis - cussions on knowledge management and its related issues have centered on large organizations (Wong and Aspinwall 2004). Additionally, in knowledge management literature it is often admitted that the leader's role as facilitator of learning is crucial in all companies. Nevertheless, only a limited amount of published research has examined the role and tasks of a leader in knowledge management. It is speculated that they should assume roles those of coachers and facilitators but these roles and tasks have not been empirically specified. Research on entrepreneurs as knowledge leaders is so far lacking. In an enterprise, learning takes place interactively between all three levels: individual, team or group and organization (Lippit, 1982, p. 43; Woolner, 1991). Nonaka & Tackeuchi (1998) have described the circulative new knowledge-creation process between tacit and explicit knowledge via four phases: socialization, articulation, integration and internalization. Among others Crossan, Lane and Hildebrandt (1991) deepens our understanding of learning processes on the schematic level of an organization. Organizational learning depends on the interpretative capabilities of individual schemas and their sufficient integration in order to form organizational schemas. Interpretations of competitive surroundings and organizational phenomena should be shared if not in all, at least in those matters crucial for the competitiveness of an enterprise. Collective schemas are associated with common concepts and language. Interpretation and integration proc - esses take place especially in the articulation phase of new knowledge creation (Nonaka & Konno, 1998). An important means of this is dialogue (Argyris 1999, p. 229-238; Nonaka & Tackeuchi, 1995; Senge, 1990). According to Oswick, Anthony, Keenoy, Mangham and Grant (2000) it is just a dialogue that connects individual learning and organizational learning. This study is one of the first steps in conceptualizing and empirically examining knowledge leadership among small business area and entrepreneurs.