Handbook on Knowledge Management 1: Knowledge Matters

711 Pages·2004·3.937 MB·English

by  David Bennet, Alex Bennet (auth.), Professor Clyde W. Holsapple (eds.)

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Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH
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ISBN 978-3-540-20005-5 ISBN 978-3-540-24746-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-24746-3
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Originally published by Springer-Verlag Berlin . Heidelberg in 2004
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004
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Dedicated with love to Carol, Christiana, and Claire
Preface
The Handbook on Knowledge Management is an extensive, fundamental reference
work for the knowledge management (KM) field. Written by a large, international
array of KM practitioners, scholars, and luminaries, its 65 chapters address a host
of issues and approach knowledge management from a wide variety of perspec-
tives. These range from classic foundations to cutting-edge thought. They ap-
proach KM from both informative and provocative standpoints. They cover both
theoretical and practical angles, historical and futuristic trends, human and techno-
logical dimensions, operational and strategic viewpoints. The chapters include
first-hand experiences, best practices, thoughtful recommendations, stimulating
insights, conceptual tools, and philosophical discussion.
As such, the Handbook on Knowledge Management serves as a portal for
knowledge management, a starting point for any investigation or study of KM, an
essential for the library of every KM practitioner, researcher, and educator. The
content is designed to be approachable by KM novices and to offer value for KM
experts. It is designed to be a fundamental, lasting benefit to the multifaceted KM
community. The KM content is broad and deep. It is also designed to go beyond
itself, by pointing readers in the direction of many fine complementary publica-
tions that focus on various specialized, narrow aspects of KM. The Handbook’s
content is specially structured in a way that allows readers to examine it straight
through, or study a particular section of interest, or consult the book as needed
when a specific KM issue arises.
Organization
The Handbook is organized into two volumes: Knowledge Matters and Knowledge
Directions. The first of these volumes establishes the fact that knowledge matters
to an organization, being important to its success or even its very survival. This
volume also covers basic knowledge matters such as the nature of an organiza-
tion’s knowledge resources, the processing of knowledge assets, and factors that
influence an organization’s conduct of knowledge management. The second vol-
ume examines directions that an organization can follow in its knowledge man-
agement initiatives, including various technological directions and competitive
directions. It documents directions that diverse organizations have taken in their
KM efforts and offers visions of directions that lie ahead.
Volume 1: Knowledge Matters
The chapters of Volume 1 are organized into four major parts. Part I examines the
foundations of knowledge management including knowledge organizations,
knowledge managers, knowledge work, knowledge fields, knowledge economy,
and a knowledge management ontology. This ontology provides an outline for
structuring the remaining seven parts of the Handbook, by recognizing three major
VIII Preface
components involved in the conduct of KM in an organization: resources, activi-
ties, and influences. It recognizes that there is an important role for technology to
play in KM, and that the conduct of KM leads to various kinds of outcomes for the
organization. Putting all of this together, it is instructive and stimulating to look at
specific instances of KM in actual organizations and to ponder what is emerging
on the KM horizon.
Part II is concerned with knowledge as a key organizational resource, as a stra-
tegic asset, and even as the intellectual capital of a nation. It presents varying
viewpoints on the nature of knowledge and discusses a wide range of knowledge
attributes. Knowledge maps and organizational memory are considered as means
for dealing with some of an organization’s knowledge assets. The embedding of
some of an organization’s knowledge resources in its culture is also considered.
Issues concerned with accounting for knowledge resources are explored and con-
trasted with traditional accounting’s focus on other kinds of organizational re-
sources. Although knowledge resources are important factors in an organization’s
success, it is also vital to pay attention to effective use of these assets in action.
In Part III, we concentrate on activities that an organization engages in when
operating on its knowledge resources. This begins with a consideration of proces-
sors that perform these activities, flows of knowledge occurring among these
processors (i.e., among and within instances of the activities), and the transforma-
tions that result. An organization’s efforts to acquire knowledge from outside itself
or select it from within are examined. Efforts to generate knowledge are discussed
in terms of such processes as problem solving, knowledge creation cycles, and
sensemaking. Collaborative KM activities involve multiple knowledge processors.
They are examined in terms of creating and facilitating communities of practice,
and appreciating knowledge sharing proficiencies. Carrying multiparticipant
knowledge activity to a higher level, the issues of blending KM with business
processes and realizing organizational learning through knowledge management
activities are considered.
Part IV is concerned with factors that influence the knowledge processing that
occurs within an organization. The ontology identifies four kinds of managerial
influences on KM: measurement, control, coordination, and leadership practices.
Accordingly, there are chapters that concentrate on valuing KM behaviors, knowl-
edge control issues (e.g., security, assurance), coordination strategies for leveraging
knowledge assets, and leadership issues (e.g., qualifications, roles, responsibilities)
and prescriptions. In an overarching vein, there are chapters that explore the rela-
tionship between trust and KM success, KM enablers and constraints, improving
KM by identifying and transferring best practices in an organization, and strategic
knowledge managing in the context of networks of organizations.
Volume 2: Knowledge Directions
In the companion volume, the Handbook continues with four more parts. Part V
surveys technologies for supporting an organization’s knowledge management
activities. This begins with an overview tracking the role and evolution of com-
mercial knowledge management software. Ensuing chapters focus on technologies
Preface IX
for knowledge storage and assimilation, knowledge processes and meta-processes
in ontology-based systems, technology for acquiring and sharing knowledge as-
sets, knowledge searching technologies, knowledge distribution technologies,
peer-to-peer computing issues for KM, technologies for generating new knowl-
edge by deriving it from existing knowledge, and automated knowledge genera-
tion via discovery that finds previously unseen patterns in data or text.
Part VI is oriented toward outcomes of knowledge management initiatives. It
begins with an introduction to the dynamic capabilities of firms, indicating that
they can compete based on knowledge. The next chapter presents the knowledge
chain model, which identifies nine KM activities that can form the basis for
achieving organizational competitiveness through superior productivity, agility,
innovation, and/or reputation. This is followed by a roadmap proposed for achiev-
ing knowledge management outcomes. The next three chapters concentrate on the
KM outcomes of productivity gains, greater agility, and innovation. Part VI closes
with a consideration of issues surrounding the valuation of outcomes from the
knowledge management function, plus a practical guide for measuring the value of
KM investments.
Experiences in the practice of knowledge management form the theme of
Part VII. This begins with an analysis of the state of current practice of knowledge
management in organizations. The analysis is based on a focus group of leaders of
KM initiatives. Next, there is an extensive comparative study of successful KM
implementations in best practice organizations. This is followed by a considera-
tion of the knowledge strategy process in the context of case studies. Part VII
closes with a series of chapters devoted to case studies of KM implementations in
the following organizations: the United States Department of Navy, Dow Chemi-
cal, Ford Motor Company, Cisco Systems, Swiss Re, a Military Joint Task Force,
and Microsoft Consulting Services. These cases offer many lessons learned from
knowledge management in action.
In Part VIII, we consider the horizon of this still unfolding field of knowledge
management. There is an exploration of what is happening and needs to happen in
the way of knowledge management education as it begins to become visible on the
university radar screen. Evolving business forms for the knowledge economy are
outlined as KM becomes increasingly established in the business world. In a re-
lated vein, a vision of the knowledge organization of the future is advanced, see-
ing it as an intelligent complex adaptive system. Also on the horizon, there is an
examination of commercialization as the next phase of knowledge management.
Another chapter sees a convergence of electronic business and knowledge man-
agement that, when recognized, promises to reshape both of them. The book
closes with reflections on the curious success of knowledge management that may
well eventuate in KM becoming pervasive and invisible. These chapters provide a
sense of direction for the future of the KM field and suggest where we might ex-
pect to see some of the pioneering efforts emerge.
X Preface
Impetus and Roots
The Handbook on Knowledge Management has grown out of an interest in KM
that has spanned four decades. My initial interest in the 1970s concentrated on the
significance of knowledge in decision making. This yielded an appreciation of the
different roles that descriptive, procedural, and reasoning knowledge play in the
making of a decision. It also led to an architecture and prototype for incorporating
all three into a single computer-based system for supporting decision-makers in a
domain of interest. Decision support systems devised in this way integrated data-
base management, solver, and artificial intelligence technologies to support the ad
hoc needs of decision-makers. In the 1980s, it was shown how this integration, as
well as the integration of other traditionally distinct software components, could
be accomplished in a synergistic fashion.
By the mid-1980s, this decision support work broadened into a vision that saw
organizations as essentially knowledge processing systems and with a great potential
to enhance the knowledge processing capabilities and outputs of their knowledge
workers by configuring them as nodes in a network of knowledge flows. Each
worker would be equipped with a networked computer-based system that could
function as an intelligent processor anticipating and supporting the worker’s needs,
tapping into and contributing to an organization’s distributed knowledge resource
base, facilitating integration and collaboration among knowledge workers.
This mid-1980s vision of the knowledge-based organization perceived it as a
knowledge processing system having knowledge assets and populated by knowledge
workers who employ their own knowledge processing skills (individually and in
tandem) to produce value from those assets. Over the next decade, achievements
of KM pioneers in a variety of organizations, plus the continuing onslaught of
technological advances such as the World Wide Web, buttressed and enriched this
vision. In the same time period, decision support systems became so ubiquitous as
to be practically invisible, blending into the fabric of work in knowledge-based
organizations. The growing challenge for harnessing technology in support of
knowledge work was to better appreciate the nature of that work within and across
organizations. This led me to investigations that were not primarily technological,
but whose results contribute to a foundation for understanding and developing
computer-based systems that enable or enhance the conduct of KM.
Over the early 1990s, these investigations yielded publications that examined
connections between knowledge and such topics as organizational reputation,
organizational learning, organizational coordination, organizational communication,
organization design, organization infrastructure, and network organizations. My
research from the latter 1990s into the new century has built on these efforts, leading
to a collaboratively engineered KM ontology, studies of the essential knowledge-
intensive nature of electronic business, and introduction of the knowledge chain
model for analyzing organizational competitiveness along the four (PAIR) dimen-
sions of productivity, agility, innovation, and reputation. In this latter phase, it be-
came evident that the time is ripe for a basic KM reference work that integrates the
myriad contributions of KM researchers into a cohesive structure. The Handbook
on Knowledge Management is the fruit of that recognition and the cooperative,
knowledge-sharing efforts of a host of contributing authors and reviewers.
Preface XI
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for the participation of so many authoritative KM practitioners,
scholars, and luminaries in contributing chapters to this book. The biographic
sketches of these authors are testimony to their qualifications, and are sympto-
matic of the range and depth of coverage provided by the Handbook. I am also
indebted to the small army of reviewers:

Maryam Alavi Osman Meric
Conan Albrecht Partha Mohapatra
Suzie Allard Joline Morrison
Elaine Allen Satish Nargundkar
Sulin Ba Mark Nissen
P. R. Balasubramanian David Oehl
Julian Barling Ghanshyam Patel
Vedabrata Basu Dennis Pearce
Dustin Cavanaugh Chanisa Phangmuangdee
Yolanda Chan Lynda Pierce
Hui-Wen Chang Lisa M. Pirone
Lei Chi Jon Powell
Mark Clare Gilbert Probst
Robert Cole Arjan Ravan
Ambrose Gerard Corray Shereen Remez
Tom Coyne Elsa Rhoades
Dan Davenport Vernon Richardson
Elsie Echeverri-Carroll Melissie Rumizen
Rod French Sub Samaddar
David Gaines Brian Schott
Brent Gallupe Larry Seligman
William Glick Sandra Smith
Peter Gray Maribel Soto
Sara Han Frank Sowa
Edward Hartono Valerie Spitler
Mark Hefferman Randy Stage
Brad Heintz Rich Talipsky
Thomas Housel Jean Tatalias
Pamsy Hui Eric Tsui
Lin Ji Robert Turner
Linda Johnson Sony Warsono
Kiku Jones Benson Wier
George Kenaston Michael Zack
Jae Kyu Lee John Zipfel
Pengtao Li
Henry Linger
Mia Lustria
Rueben McDaniel, Jr.
James McKeen