Mapping knowledge sharing traits to business strategy in knowledge based organisation

Globalization has resulted in increasing use of knowledge as competitive weapon in many organizations nowadays. In this context, an increasing number of organizations are focusing on communities of practice (CoPs) orientated knowledge management (KM) studies and the links between KM and organizational business strategy. This link is an important determinant of organizational performance. While KM business strategy (linked to organization business strategy) is important, knowledge sharing behavior of knowledge workers is a critical enabler of effective knowledge management and organizational performance. That is, organizations invest resources in creating CoPs for competitive advantage and lack of suitable candidates will result in loss of momentum and less knowledge sharing in CoPs and there by underutilizing the resources. The aim of this research is to identify the personality traits to portrait the features of knowledge workers suitable for CoPs oriented KM and business strategy. Four KM business strategies have been established in this paper in light of organization performance orientation and KM implementation mode and traits of knowledge workers are mapped to different business strategies. The most significant personality traits of knowledge sharing behavior have been analyzed to determine the suitable traits for different type business strategies. Thus contributions of this paper include (a) defining a model which links four business strategies with CoPs orientated KM model and knowledge sharing behavior model (based on revised Five Factor Model); (b) mapping of personality traits of knowledge workers with four business strategies; (c) providing a guideline to knowledge based organizations for seamless integration of business strategy with CoPs oriented KM and compatible knowledge workers and d) more effective utilization of organizational resources to facilitate improvement in organizational performance.     

Understanding the effect of knowledge management strategies on knowledge management performance: A contingency perspective

The universalistic perspective research on employing a unidimensional knowledge management (KM) strategy has yielded conflicting findings and recommendations in different contexts. This study proposes a contingency model for investigating the effects of KM strategies on KM performance to resolve these contradictions. Drawing on the knowledge-based view (KBV) of the firm, which identifies knowledge type and origin as two key KM dimensions, this study first defines four KM strategies: external codification, internal codification, external personalization, and internal personalization. A multiple contingency model of KM strategy is then developed based on a technology–organization–environment framework. This study proposes that the effectiveness of each KM strategy depends on both external and internal contextual conditions, namely, environmental knowledge intensity and organizational information systems (IS) maturity. To test and validate the contingency model, we analyze data from 141 firms to explain the effects of KM strategies on KM performance. Our results reveal three KM strategies, not including the internal personalization strategy, which have a significant association with KM performance in their hypothesized contexts. This study expands KM strategy research by theoretically developing an advanced contingency model aligned with external and internal contexts and by providing valuable practical suggestions to managers for selecting a KM strategy based on multiple contingencies related to the external and internal conditions of a firm.     

The impact of organizational culture on the use of ICT for knowledge management

The paper aims at analyzing the influence of diverse organizational cultures on the use of ICT for strategic KM. By combining literature from different areas, namely strategic KM, ICT for KM, organizational culture and effectiveness, a theoretical model is proposed and tested in a sample of more than 300 firms in Spain. Results show that diverse organizational cultures (hierarchy, clan, adhocracy and market) are found to impact on the use of ICT for strategic KM (personalization and codification) differently. Specifically, corporate cultures based on hierarchies and markets do not impact on the use of ICT for KM, while clan culture favours the use of ICT for personalization strategy and adhocracy positively influences technologies for personalization and codification as well. These findings may have significant implications for researchers and managers.     

Determinants of knowledge management with information technology support impact on firm performance

The relationship between knowledge management (KM) and firm performance has been the subject of discussion in management literature. However, certain studies have found a significant link between KM and firm performance, whereas others have not. Thus, to better understand the effect of KM on firm performance, this study focuses on the performance effects of KM with information technology support (KMIT). The model of this paper includes three organizational factors: structure, culture, and incentive. Surveys collected from 119 high tech firms were analyzed to test the model. The results confirmed the effect of organizational factors on overall KMIT, which was found to be critical for improving firm performance. Our study has implications for academics and practitioners by providing a better understanding of the importance of KM in explaining firm performance.     

Assessing the impact of knowledge management strategies announcements on the market value of firms

Although there is much literature on the relationship between KM strategies and organizational performance, the benefit of KM strategies is not well understood. We addressed this issue by exploring how KM strategies influence a firm's market value using event study methodology. We evaluated the cumulative abnormal returns for KM strategies announced by U. S. firms from 1998 to 2003. Our findings supported the hypothesis that firms’ announcements about their KM strategies provoked positive reactions in the market. More specifically, strategies that focus on either (i) knowledge reusability through IT or (ii) knowledge sharing through informal discussions among employees contributed to higher performance than strategies that emphasized both. This outcome empirically supported our argument that the emphasis on either tacit or explicit knowledge results in a better market value of the firm. Furthermore, the market's reaction to the announcement is dependent on the firm's industry classification. The findings of this study offer insights that may help managers maximize the market impact of their KM strategies.     

A diagnosis framework for identifying the current knowledge sharing activity status in a community of practice

The concept of Communities of Practice (CoPs) has been highlighted as an effective method for knowledge sharing in Knowledge Management (KM) and strategically utilized by many organizations. Therefore, the need to diagnose knowledge sharing activities in CoPs has increased. Previous research on CoP strategies has generally suggested broad guidelines without diagnosing the current knowledge sharing status of individual CoPs. Furthermore, diagnosis methodologies are not connected to strategic direction and require too much time and effort to conduct regularly. The purpose of this paper is to develop a sustainable diagnosis framework for identifying knowledge sharing activities in CoPs using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and to suggest strategies for individual CoPs based on the proposed diagnosis framework. Finally, we apply the proposed diagnosis framework to an industry case.     

Toward a unified knowledge management model for SMEs

Adoption of knowledge management (KM) has become the emerging agenda in developing business strategies. However, due to the resources and budget constraints, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fail to realize and recognize the potential benefits of KM, hence they are reluctant to participate in advancement and transformation of knowledge management. Moreover, SMEs are usually encountering ambiguity and uncertainty of adopting and implementing KM. This study examines the infrastructure and process capabilities of Taiwanese SMEs and conducts a comparative analysis of KM in SMEs in Hong Kong. The research results indicate that a successful KM implementation depends on a harmonious amalgamation of infrastructure and process capabilities, including technology, culture and organizational structure. This analysis may also help in understanding the government role in providing necessary assistance to the SMEs for pursing KM.     

Options analysis and knowledge management: Implications for theory and practice

Real options can be a powerful tool for quantifying the value of strategic and operational flexibility associated with uncertain IT investments. They also constitute a new way of thinking as to how knowledge management (KM) can be implemented and managed to maximize the upside potential while minimizing any downside risk. This paper explored how practitioners can incorporate options analysis into contemporary knowledge management. Options analysis is recognizing real options and then determines how they add value. The main issue here is to manage knowledge so that the theoretical option value is realized in practice. This paper developed a new metric, knowledge management performance index (KMPI), for evaluating the performance of a firm in its KM at any given point in time as follows: knowledge creation, knowledge conversion, knowledge circulation and knowledge completion. The higher the efficiency of the KM process, the higher the KMPI, thereby is enabling firms to become increasingly knowledgeable. To prove the contribution of the KMPI, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 121 firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (TSEC). This paper makes five important contributions: (1) it shows that if the KM process improves, the KMPI is enhanced. This finding is based on a survey of the questionnaires. As a result, the KMPI can effectively and efficiently represent the KM process; (2) it shows that when the KMPI increases, a company’s performance will be enhanced in five different areas This indicates a significant relationship between the KMPI and the company’s performance; (3) it also shows that the higher the KMPI, the higher the performance of the organization. This is especially valuable to any organization where knowledge is not being used optimally; (4) it provides an option analysis that may be helpful to managers for making the right decision in an uncertain environment; and (5) it presents the first application of the Black-Scholes model to use an actual business situation involving KM as its test bed. The results proved that the option pricing model can act as a measurement guideline for the entire knowledge of the whole company.     

Exploring knowledge management software implementation from a knowing-in-practice perspective

This paper draws attention to a major issue of Knowledge Management (KM) technology implementation: potential sources of incongruence between KM software and the adopting organization. Using the case of a global consultancy firm, the paper explains KM software-organization incongruences as the consequence of differences between organizational and KM software developer’s knowledge work context and practice. Such differences reflect the differing ‘situated’ knowledge work practices that KM software developers and adopting organizations deliberately acquire and evolve over time. Theoretically, this paper gives a more comprehensive account of how knowledge work practices emerged and were then embedded into the software or the organization. Practically, this study would help make organizations more aware of the factors influencing KM software adoption and implementation, particularly in the case of large firms that are characterized by high-value, text-based content for decision-making such as professional service, R&D, and healthcare organizations.     

An empirical study of the effects of knowledge sharing and learning behaviors on firm performance

Knowledge sharing and learning behaviors in the workplace are believed to be very important to the success of firms. In this study, the relationships between knowledge sharing and learning behaviors, business process improvement, product and service offerings, and organizational performance are examined based on a sample of 134 firms engaged in manufacturing, and wholesale or retailing operations. Data analyses using the partial least squares statistical technique revealed that knowledge sharing and learning behaviors are positively associated with business process improvement, and product and service offerings. Business process improvement and product and service offerings are positively associated, and they in turn are positively related to organizational performance. The findings reinforce the importance of knowledge sharing and learning to companies. Executives should encourage knowledge management and organizational learning activities within their firms, and give proper considerations to the strategies and implementation of programs supporting these activities in order to enhance firm performance.     

Doing Business with Theory: Communities of Practice in Knowledge Management

We explore how the notion of communities of practice (CoPs) was translated and popularized from its original inception by Lave and Wenger in 1991. We argue that the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL), a spin-off of Xerox PARC, proved instrumental in enrolling CoPs into the knowledge management (KM) discipline. IRL objectified, packaged, and made a business out of CoPs. CoPs in KM are now a formalized process coupled with technological artifacts to build groups of people who effectively share knowledge across boundaries. Drawing from participant observations, archival documents, and interviews with KM practitioners in the aerospace industry as well as key players of IRL, our research seeks to unveil the invisible history that the popularization of a theory can often obscure. We argue that CoPs provide a case study for understanding how abstract concepts in science are strategically and subconsciously reified, or made objects of inquiry, and appropriated by actors. This reification of a “soft” science blurs the line between theory and technology.     

Organizational knowledge resources

Decision-making episodes are knowledge intensive processes, operating on and adding to organizational knowledge resources. Decision support systems (DSS) perform some of the knowledge management (KM) that is integral to these episodes. Interest in the field of KM, among both practitioners and researchers has mushroomed in the late 1990s. Initiatives that aim to deliberately, explicitly manage organizations' knowledge resources have become commonplace. A basic prerequisite for fully understanding how an organization can, could, or should conduct KM is an appreciation of the kinds of knowledge resources it has. In this paper, a framework of knowledge resources is introduced, focusing on identifying and organizing basic classes of knowledge resources, and supplemented by the identification of attribute dimensions for characterizing knowledge across these classes. Developed via a Delphi methodology involving an international panel of practitioners and researchers, this framework is assessed as being relatively successful in terms of completeness, accuracy, clarity, and conciseness criteria. The result is a basis for investigating effects of alternative knowledge resource portfolios, and for studying how an organization does, could, or should conduct its KM — including its decision-making episodes.     

Can competitive advantage be achieved through knowledge management? A case study on SMEs

Unlike most Knowledge Management (KM) studies which focus on large enterprises, this study focuses on SMEs in Malaysia which represent 99.2% of the total business establishments, the largest percentage of establishments in the country. The tridimensional relationship between KM practices, technological innovation (TI) and competitive advantage (CA) was examined in this case study. Survey approach was conducted to gather data from managers of the manufacturing SMEs and 195 samples were usable for statistical analysis using Partial-Least-Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM)-Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The use of the combined PLS-SEM and ANN analysis can provide a significant methodological contribution and substantial impacts to the world of expert and intelligent systems and could be the next methodological research paradigm. Findings validated that KM has a direct positive and significant relation with both TI and CA; while TI positively and significantly affects CA. Most outstandingly, the mediating role of TI that connects KM and CA has been proven to be positive and significant. This paper utilizes samples that were collected from Malaysian SMEs only; therefore the findings cannot be generalized to represent the larger firms. Nevertheless, conclusions garnered from the present research can help both practitioners of the manufacturing SMEs and scholars in implementing the correct KM strategies, so that both TI and CA can be enhanced and improved.     

Choosing knowledge management strategies by using a combined ANP and DEMATEL approach

Numerous companies are expecting their knowledge management (KM) to be performed effectively in order to leverage and transform the knowledge into competitive advantages. However, here raises a critical issue of how companies can better evaluate and select a favorable KM strategy prior to a successful KM implementation. The KM strategy selection is a kind of multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, which requires considering a large number of complex factors as multiple evaluation criteria. A robust MCDM method should consider the interactions among criteria. The analytic network process (ANP) is a relatively new MCDM method which can deal with all kinds of interactions systematically. Moreover, the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) not only can convert the relations between cause and effect of criteria into a visual structural model, but also can be used as a way to handle the inner dependences within a set of criteria. Hence, this paper proposes an effective solution based on a combined ANP and DEMATEL approach to help companies that need to evaluate and select KM strategies. Additionally, an empirical study is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method.     

A mobile knowledge carrier with personalized knowledge provision

In the e-commerce era, the organization knowledge within a centralized knowledge management server can be easily accessed over the Internet by the client PCs at distinct locations. Currently, the personal digital assistant (PDA) has been widely used as the carrier for personal memos and daily records for its high mobility. Taking advantage of the personal information, the user requirements for knowledge can be determined. This research presents an intelligent KM scheme by integrating the PDA information (including notes, schedules and address book) mining model and mobile knowledge management mechanism. Based on the user profile mining technique, the PDA-ready knowledge that fits user requirements can be imported from the knowledge server to the client PDA. Demonstration cases are also provided to illustrate the applications of the proposed model in the content services and healthcare industry. By application of the mobile KM technique, the organization knowledge can be seamlessly provided to the PDA user via the data synchronization process. The attempt of this paper is to present an applicable and intelligent mobile knowledge carrier for realization of the mobile office.     

Applying a Market-Based Approach to the Development of a Sharing-Enabled KM Model for Knowledge-Intensive Small Firms

In this paper, we draw on the knowledge market analogy and integrate the considerations of organizational culture and attributes, knowledge management (KM) guiding principles and continuous learning-based systems development into the design of a model for KM initiatives. This model has been implemented in a small medical consulting firm for its KM initiative. The successful implementation of this model indicates the possible applicability of our model to other knowledge-intensive small firms and the feasibility of applying the same concepts used in larger KM implementations to small companies.     

Using peer-to-peer technology for knowledge sharing in communities of practices

Communities of Practices (CoPs) are informal structures within organizations that bind people together through informal relationships and the sharing of expertise and experience. As such, they are effective tools for the creation and sharing of organizational knowledge, and an increasing number of organizations are adopting them as part of their knowledge management strategies. In this paper, we examine the knowledge sharing characteristics and roles of CoPs and develop a peer-to-peer knowledge sharing architecture that matches the behavioral characteristics of the members of the CoPs. We also propose a peer-to-peer knowledge sharing tool called KTella that enables a community's members to voluntarily share and retrieve knowledge more effectively.     

Revealing performance heterogeneity through knowledge management maturity evaluation: A capability-based approach

The dynamic capabilities view (DCV) focuses on renewal of firms’ strategic knowledge resources so as to sustain competitive advantage within turbulent markets. Within the context of the DCV, the focus of knowledge management (KM) is to develop the KMC through deploying knowledge governance mechanisms that are conducive to facilitating knowledge processes so as to produce superior business performance over time. The essence of KM performance evaluation is to assess how well the KMC is configured with knowledge governance mechanisms and processes that enable a firm to achieve superior performance through matching its knowledge base with market needs. However, little research has been undertaken to evaluate KM performance from the DCV perspective. This study employed a survey study design and adopted hypothesis-testing approaches to develop a capability-based KM evaluation framework (CKMEF) that upholds the basic assertions of the DCV. Under the governance of the framework, a KM index (KMI) and a KM maturity model (KMMM) were derived not only to indicate the extent to which a firm’s KM implementations fulfill its strategic objectives, and to identify the evolutionary phase of its KMC, but also to bench-mark the KMC in the research population. The research design ensured that the evaluation framework and instruments have statistical significance and good generalizabilty to be applied in the research population, namely construction firms operating in the dynamic Hong Kong construction market. The study demonstrated the feasibility of quantitatively evaluating the development of the KMC and revealing the performance heterogeneity associated with the development.     

A sharing-oriented design strategy for networked knowledge organization systems

Designers of networked knowledge organization systems often follow a service-oriented design strategy, assuming an organizational model where one party outsources clearly delineated business processes to another party. But the logic of outsourcing is a poor fit for some knowledge organization practices. When knowledge organization is understood as a process of exchange among peers, a sharing-oriented design strategy makes more sense. As an example of a sharing-oriented strategy for designing networked knowledge organization systems, we describe the design of the PeriodO period gazetteer. We analyze the PeriodO data model, its representation using JavaScript Object Notation-Linked Data, and the management of changes to the PeriodO dataset. We conclude by discussing why a sharing-oriented design strategy is appropriate for organizing scholarly knowledge.