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Abstract
The objective of this study is to characterize the cycle of knowledge in the supply chain of the industry of corn
for human consumption. White corn is cultivated almost exclusively for human consumption and it has a
significant value in the food supply in countries whose diet has a high proportion of this variety of corn, such as:
Venezuela, México and Colombia in America, and the Republic of South Africa and Sahel countries in Africa.
Corn is produced in Venezuela, under rainfed conditions and in a highly mechanized production system.
The cycle of knowledge is defined as a progressive spiral in which knowledge is created, stored, transferred,
applied and preserved, in order to increase the competitiveness and sustainability of organizations and
companies in the food supply chain.
This non‐experimental and cross‐sectional research is of a descriptive type. It was conducted in Venezuela
during the second semester of 2009 in the supply chain of white corn, specifically, at the level of first tier
producers (primary sector). The population is constituted by 1,754 producers of corn in the most important
producing regions of the country. The representative sample was selected by the stratified sampling technique
with proportional allocation: by association of corn producers and according to the grain yield. A questionnaire
was designed and conducted according to the structured survey method. Its validity was verified by discriminant
tests of items and its reliability through Bartlett's test, variance factorial analysis, Kaiser‐Meyer‐Olkin and
Cronbach Alpha, achieving the last one a value of 0.9276.
The production units have an average area of 67.17 ha, with 1.97 permanent workers and 4.06 temporary
workers. They obtained a physical productivity of 4,210.45 kg.ha‐1. The Knowledge Index (KI) achieved a value of
69.78% and the Perception Index of the results (PI) was 76.06%. The Pearson correlation among these indices
was positive and significant with a value of 0.51. The factorial analysis for principal components with rotated
factors allows obtaining four factors from the five dimensions originally considered. These factors are: (1)
knowledge creation, (2) knowledge storage, (3) knowledge transfer and application, and (4) preservation of
knowledge.
The results allow us to conclude that the cycle of knowledge is managed in four stages in an intuitive and
predominantly tacit manner which is the reason why those practices related to explicit knowledge become the
agents of differentiation. Moreover, the existence of a positive correlation between the Knowledge Index and
the Perception Index of the positive results by the producer was also proven.