A study recently concluded at the new Middlesex University campus in Malta revealed that the micro enterprise is at greater risk of “forgetting what they know” than larger organisations. Its impact is augmented by the fact that 80% of the workforce in western economies is directly engaged in micro enterprise activity. Corporate amnesia is the phenomena that deplete knowledge of past business and procedural experiences as a direct consequence of staff absenteeism, dismissal, retirement, mobility and excessive reliance on tacit knowledge.

The research conducted by Stephen J. Hall serves to enhance the competitive success of the majority of Maltese enterprises. His thesis entitled The challenges of implementing and optimising knowledge management in the micro business environment exposed reasons for the lack of “knowledge management” adoption and proposes an optimised model specifically addressing the particular characteristics and limited resources of the micro enterprise. 

A paper based on this research was presented during the 19th conference on Knowledge Acquisition and Management held in Poland last month. The conference formed part of the Federated Conference of Computer Science and Information Systems and was held in cooperation with IEEE Region 8.

Mr Hall received his first degree in Computing and Information Systems and recently an MSc in Business Information Systems Management. His post-graduate studies were partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme (Malta) and the scholarship was part-financed by the European Union – European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, Empowering people for more jobs and a better quality of life.

Mr Hall is the founder of Your iT department and specialises in novel corporate services aimed at maximising productivity.