Document management practices in SMEs. An information management capability-based approach
| Pages | 63-79 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-10-2018-0042 |
| Date | 06 September 2019 |
| Published date | 06 September 2019 |
| Author | Mayra A. Macías-Jiménez,Luis Carlos Acosta-Fontalvo,Miguel A. Jiménez-Barros |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Document management practices
in SMEs
An information management
capability-based approach
Mayra A. Macías-Jiménez and Luis Carlos Acosta-Fontalvo
Department of Industrial, Agroindustrial and Operations Management,
Universidad de la Costa, Barranquilla, Colombia and
Miguel A. Jiménez-Barros
Department of Computer Science, Universidad de la Costa, Barranquilla, Colombia
Abstract
Purpose –This research studied thecurrent document management (DM) practices in small and medium-
sized enterprises(SMEs) of a road freight transport sector in a South American city with the aim to determine
strengthsand challenges for improving information management.
Design/methodology/approach –The study was conducted using a survey approach based on
measuring information management capabilities (IMC) through the following main dimensions: perception
about DM practices, DM policies and tools, IT usage, organizational climate, and problems related to
documentmanagement.
Findings –The main results from the work statedthe challenges for these companies in adopting electronic
document management systems (EDMS) and handling information effectively even though the business
experience. Also, the study highlighted the top management commitment in terms of investments for IMC
development. Nevertheless, this economic support tends to be not enough to afford the EDMS
implementation.
Originality/value –Regarding the importance of informationin road freight transport sector, this paper
explored DM practices in a field in which no previousstudies related to DM had been conducted and set the
basis to makedecisions to improve information managementperformance.
Keywords Information management, road freight transport, document management, EDMS,
information management capabilities (IMC)
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Documents play a critical role in storing corporate information and recording the
organization memory (Forbes-Pitt, 2006). Nowadays, there is a great interest in developing
strategies to preserve and extend the documents lifecycle. In the recent past, the growth of
information and communication technology (ICT) and an increasing generation of
documents have begun a revolutionin methods and techniques used to manage documents.
Initially, the interest in this field was originated with legal awareness; for instance, the
This study was supported by the Colombian Administrative Department for the Development of
Science and Technology (Colciencias) in collaboration with Universidad de la Costa through the
Young Researcher Grant No. 702-2014, under the project “Standardization of document processes for
merchandise’s storing and transportation through a web platform for improving competitiveness”.
Document
management
practices in
SMEs
63
Received21 October 2018
Revised21 October 2018
25February 2019
28May 2019
Accepted16 June 2019
RecordsManagement Journal
Vol.30 No. 1, 2020
pp. 63-79
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/RMJ-10-2018-0042
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0956-5698.htm
Paperwork Reduction Actof 1980 has set the information management as a scarce resource,
defining the base for resources managementin the United States (Artiles Visbal, 2009).
Another attempt in this context wasthe International Standard on Records Management
(ISO 15489) approved in 2001, which gave a reference framework for implementing
document management systems and provided a useful guideline for managing documents.
This standard is considered the first internationalstandard for document management, and
it is based on the American Theory of RecordManagement and Australian Record Keeping
(Katuu, 2016).
Accordingly, there is a growing businessconcern for improving document management
procedures. To meet this goal, the design and implementation of electronic document
management systems (EDMS) has become one of the strategies adopted by companies.
Electronic document management systems contribute to reducing the occurrence of
problems related to managingpaper documents, such as access to information, deterioration
due to continuous handling or because of inappropriate storage conditions, and even loss of
information (Jervisand Masoodian, 2014).
However, the implementationof these systems requires a previous evaluation to measure
the business capability and to determine the suitable requirements for implementing an
EDMS (Knowles, 1995). There are two main types of capabilities that are considered to
measure the business capability in a company: organizational and technological ones
(Li et al., 2006). As the concern for document management increase, many authors have
proposed research to study and analyze the organization performance focused on IT
capabilities or information management capabilities (IMC). Despite this, limited research
considering measuringthe IMC to document management in Small and Medium Enterprises
(SMEs) in the road freight transport sector have been conducted. This exploratory study
tries to cover this gap through the measurement of paper and electronic document
management proceduresand practices in this sector in a city of South America.
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 structuresa review of related literature focused
on IT, IM capabilities and documentmanagement studies. This is followed by a description
of the methods used (Section 3), participants involved in the study and data collection.
Results and analysis are discussed in section 4 and 5, respectively. The article concludes
with the findings, their implicationsand outlines future research directions (Section 6).
2. Literature review
2.1 IT capabilities
IT capabilities have been studiedbefore by several authors mainly through surveys. One of
the seminal papers in this field is the work of Bharadwaj (2000), who evaluated the
correlation between IT capabilities and firm performance through an empirical test from a
resource-based view (RBV). The authorstates that IT capability is a complex organizational
capability that needs efforts in IT infrastructure, human IT resources, and IT-enabled
intangibles. Although, thestudy argues that a successful performance needs more than just
IT investment.
The effect of IT assets on organizational capabilityof apparel companies in the U.S was
measured by Luo et al. (2012). In this work, the organizational capability was studied in
terms of operational capability,customer service, and innovation. The results demonstrated
that IT assets contribute to accumulating organizational capabilities. Therefore, IT
investments are a key element to facilitate and improve capabilities accumulation in this
sector. In fields such as logistics and supply chain, IT represents benefits in terms of
increasing efficiencyand effectiveness (Gunasekaran et al.,2016).
RMJ
30,1
64
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