Quality management at business companies is one of major factors affecting entrepreneurship success, and, ultimately sustainable development of firms, industries and countries. The product quality is today one of the essential and indispensable preconditions of a company´s success on the market, the quality of the offered products and services has an irreplaceable position in the industrial practice, the quality has become an entrepreneurial phenomenon. In this contribution we would like to deal with the importance of quality for businesses, and at the same time this article is concerned primarily with the quality management in small and medium-sized businesses, since we think that these issues are not given adequate attention.

The environment in which managers currently operate is dynamic and turbulent. This fact affects the great complexity and dynamism of changes. Thus, decision-making becomes more complex in the context of sustainability. Decisive decision-making is becoming rare, and the challenge of globalization is increasing. Under its influence, decision-making is no longer deterministic. Decision-making processes prevail in conditions of uncertainty. In this context, there is a very intense need to be acquainted with progressive tools to support decision-making and management and to apply the acquired knowledge in practice. This paper focuses on three related areas. We are talking about knowledge management in connection with the most important contributing element—decision-making with quality management. We deal with the characteristics of the individual areas, defining their mutual relationship on a systemic basis. The paper also points to the necessary connection between theory and practice. More specifically, it points to the practical applications of management to decision-making as a managerial function and, at the same time, related to decision-making in quality management. Subsequently, we define the links to knowledge management with an emphasis on the use of procedures, methods, and knowledge in the decision-making process, which we use in theory and practice in quality management.

Business management is a set of specific activities that a daily manager performs. Many facts and their course are influenced by their intuitive or cognitive decision-making. It has the ability to manage traditionally, dogmatically, or innovatively, which also depends largely on its personality profile. However, all executives jointly influence the environment in which they can apply their skills. It is an environment that is changing globalization. Managers need to recognize and interact with their impacts if they want to manage competitive businesses. They are looking for ways to reveal and use the dynamics and complexity of the predominantly variable business environment. In doing so, they use a variety of progressive management support tools that evolve as a reflection of environmental variability and turbulence. One of the options offered for more effective management is knowledge management. This form of management is an effective and efficient acquisition, creation and sharing of knowledge in all their manifestations and forms within and around the enterprise. Knowledge management is based on the principles of a holistic, systematic approach to data management and processing for the purpose of sustainable business development. In order to fulfill this ambition, however, the decisive factor is, above all, the level of knowledge participation based on the creation of new values as well as wealth itself. The paper highlights the importance, mission and functionality of knowledge management in human resource management, with a great deal of knowledge, given the importance of corporate assets at the forefront, presents and evaluates the results of the knowledge management survey in the selected company in the Slovak Republic.

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