Knowledge management: An overview of European reality

This paper aims to determine whether the implementation of knowledge management (KM) is linked to e‐business performance and to identify the nature of the relationship existing in the different components of knowledge‐sharing and application and internet‐based KM.

This paper establishes a new model of the practices and results of the KM which has been tested in European companies. For that purpose, a structural equation modelling analysis was used.

The results show that product innovation and external employees’ access to databases have a strong positive effect on the maximization of internet‐based KM and that internet‐based KM has also a positive impact on e‐business performance.

Limitations of this study include the need for more research into the KM cycle. This paper contributes to the research on this topic with new evidence in a broad sample.

These results point to KM's usefulness in improving every day e‐business processes. Therefore managers should be aware of these benefits.

The present study advances knowledge on the nature of the relative importance of different components of internet‐based KM as drivers of e‐business performance.