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Field expertise in industry is often poorly recorded and unexploited. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodology and tool that incorporates a knowledge validation loop to leverage upon human-contributed field observations in industrial maintenance management. Starting from a failure mode, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) model, it defines a collaborative process that links FMECA knowledge with field maintenance practice.

A metadata management system is designed to encourage staff involvement in enriching knowledge with field observations. The process supports easy feedback and collaborative annotation and is pilot tested via an industrial case study.

Streamlining FMECA validation is welcomed by maintenance staff, empowering them to exert more control over the management, usage and versioning of reference knowledge.

The methodology for metadata management in industrial maintenance enables staff participation in a collaborative knowledge enrichment process. Metadata management is a pre-cursor and therefore an important step to drive future analytics.

Industry personnel are more inclined to contribute to organisational knowledge if the process is based on reference knowledge and requires minimal interaction.

Facilitating individual contribution to collective knowledge strengthens the sense that each staff member can have organisational impact.

The paper introduces a methodology and tool to stimulate human-contributed knowledge in industrial maintenance, strengthening collaborative organisation knowledge flows.

This paper aims at exploring the factors that are important for the digital development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis compared to large-sized enterprises.

Using data from a survey in Greek firms during the pandemic, econometric models are estimated to identify factors that are related to the expansion of digital marketing and e-commerce practices of SMEs and large-sized enterprises based on the technology–organization–environment framework.

The results suggest that while further investments in information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure are important for the digital development of SMEs during the COVID-19 crisis, it is the innovative activities that advance the digitalization of large-sized enterprises. Also, SMEs, which implement flexible human resource (HR) practices (such as remote work) and face delays in the supply chain due to the pandemic, appear to have increased probability of expanding their digital marketing and e-commerce. On the contrary, HR practices do not seem to matter for large firms, while new regulations appear to discourage their digital development during the COVID-19 crisis.

This is the first study which empirically explores the digital reactions of SMEs compared to those of large-sized enterprises in a pandemic crisis context. It advances the limited knowledge on the potentially different responses of SMEs and large-sized enterprises to major external shocks with respect to their digital marketing and e-commerce expansion.