Knowledge and LearnIng, Markets and Organizations

2006

In the last decades, learning and knowledge have become key success factors for international competitiveness with the result that intangible and immaterial resources have overtaken physical and tangible assets in order of importance. The introduction of knowledge management ...

Long Range Planning, 1997

Knowledge can be seen as a key source of advantage. Its importance has been recognized for a long time. Some scholars have realized that information can create wealth. What is happening today is that there has been a qualitative change in the way in which vast amounts of data can be collected and communicated. The risk is of information overload. To help avoid this, a discipline is needed which can distinguish between data and knowledge, can find ways to reduce the overload and can organize itself.

Journal of Knowledge Management, 2013

Purpose-The goal of this research is to empirically assess whether knowledge management (KM) and learning organizations (LO) are distinct concepts and if so, to test whether KM enhances LO more or vice versa. Design/methodology/approach-The authors propose an approach by which they first empirically assess the independence of those two concepts, then KM's fundamental processes, being knowledge acquisition, sharing, and utilization, are hypothesized to have a positive relationship with the different LO dimensions. Retail business employees working in organizations in Lebanon were surveyed. KM processes were first designated as dependent variables and then as independent variables. Bartlett's test, Pearson correlation, factor analysis, and regression analysis were used to test the hypothesis. Findings-The results indicated that the two dimensions LO and KM are distinct and that KM enhances LO more than LO enhances KM. Practical implications-This research extends the impact of knowledge management to include informal processes. It provides empirical evidence that managers should seek to implement formal and informal knowledge management processes into their organizational culture to enable a dynamic learning environment. Originality/value-This research is significant in that up to this point the relationship between KM and LO has been posited and supported through anecdotal evidence and observation. This research provides empirical evidence of the relationship and forms the basis for further study in this area.

Management Learning 39(2) 159-176, 2008

Draws together theorizing in learning, organization and management studies in order to consider the nature of the problems by which the practice of knowledge management is animated. Though in places propositional, the points being made remain deliberately suggestive insofar as they invoke a wide-ranging past to consider what might be probable futures. The conclusion invokes a return to the past, in suggesting that the potential for knowledge management lies with its returning to a time when theorizing was grounded in what we now choose to ignore, namely managers' experiences and practices as they use their imagination in wealth-creating activity.

2003

2015

The activity that we now call knowledge management has been practised for thousands of yearsprobably ever since the first "organizers" in tribes or villages tried to think of ways to stop repeating the same mistakes. Coming up with new knowledge, sharing it with others, making sure it is retained for the future, refining it (learning from experience), understanding how to apply it and deciding when to discard it are all important parts of the human experience. Nevertheless it was only in 1986 that the explicit attempt to direct and combine these activities was given the name knowledge management, by Karl Wiig. Most of the work on knowledge management in the generation or so since then has been set in an organizational context, and that is the emphasis we take in this book. It is nevertheless worth bearing in mind that many of the principles of knowledge management apply at levels all the way from the individual (personal knowledge management) to nations or even (say) science itself. Knowledge management sits at the intersection of several disciplines, including organizational learning, computer science, human resource management, economics, psychology and strategic management. As a result, it is not very surprising that there is no single agreed view of what knowledge management is. 2 Indeed, some would go so far as to say that managing knowledge is not possible, and that the best that can be achieved is managing human "knowers." Perhaps the only aspects that everyone agrees on are that knowledge management is (at best) difficult, and that any knowledge management initiative in an organization has to be tailored to the particular context of that organization at that time. Knowledge management as a field acquired the status of a management "fad" in the mid-to late-1990s, with an explosion in the number of books and articles published about it, and it is fair to say that it has both benefited and suffered from this status. Nevertheless, unlike some other management fads, it has demonstrated its staying power, and is widely practised and studied worldwide today, even if not always under the precise name knowledge management. The aim of this book is to review the field of knowledge management with an operational research/management science mindset, encompassing both "soft" and "hard" aspects. This implies a holistic approach that gives a broader perspective than one based on any single viewpoint such as that of computer science or organizational learning. The various chapters represent the best knowledge management articles published in the 21st century in the journals Knowledge Management Research & Practice and the European Journal of Information Systems. All have undergone a rigorous double-blind review process, and the contributing authors include Ikujiro Nonaka, perhaps the biggest name in the knowledge management field, as well as others with equal reputations in associated fields such as George Huber (decision support) and Richard Baskerville (information systems). The contributing authors are based in nine different countries on four continents, showing the global nature of knowledge management.

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2003

Knowledge management is a topic that crosses borders of various kinds, such as those between departments, between organisations or between countries. In this paper we will consider various issues relating to knowledge management, in the context where more than one department/organisation/country is involved. To do this, we place an emphasis on knowledge management as a process, rather than as an organisational system or, worse, as a piece of technology. This process involves trust, negotiationand indeed some technological support. In this paper we wish to introduce the concept of "triangles of trust", and to focus on where "the top meets the bottom" in terms of knowledge management and organisational learning. Partial examples will be offered in support of our views, but no full and complete examplesknowledge management simply is not well enough understood or documented for that yet. Our overall conclusion is that there is no one best way to "do" knowledge management, but there are principles that ought to be applied.

2002

La gestione dell'impresa basata sulla conoscenza è da tempo oggetto di attenzione negli studi e nelle prassi di tipo economico-aziendale poiché capace di sviluppare vantaggi competitivi difendibili e duraturi nel tempo . In questa prospettiva, gli approfondimenti hanno riguardato sia le implicazioni strategiche e organizzative, che quelle tecnologiche, del controllo di gestione e della comunicazione economico-finanziaria. Questo lavoro affronta il tema dell'impatto della conoscenza sulla struttura dei costi e della performance dell'impresa. In particolare, tramite l'impiego dell'apparato concettuale e metodologico dello strategic cost management verranno analizzati l'impatto del tipo di conoscenza implicita nelle attività e nei costi dell'impresa, le relative determinanti, le eventuali relazioni con il valore generato dalle suddette attività e il profitto potenziale dell'impresa. Dopo la premessa teorica che ha motivato questa ricerca, verrà illustrato il modello di ricerca e la sua applicazione a quattro imprese italiane operanti nel settore meccanico. Pur essendo la ricerca ancora in corso, i risultati qui riportati mostrano che l'informazione di costo può aiutare a supportare i processi decisionali collegati allo sviluppo e alla gestione della conoscenza. Organizational knowledge is receiving increasing attention in the management literature because of its claimed capability to create a competitive advantage. In recent years, notable research efforts have been addressed to strategic, organizational, technological, financial and management reporting issues linked to the knowledge role in organizations. This paper focuses its attention to the way knowledge affects firms cost structure. Most specifically, by using recent research development in the field of strategic cost management, the paper investigates the activities related to organizational knowledge, their cost and cost drivers, and their impact on firm's profit potential with the aim to provide information for effective strategic decision making and control. After a brief literature review of knowledge management theories and applications, research model and methodology will be elicited. Then the model will be applied to four Italian companies operating in the mechanical industry. While this paper is a work in progress, evidence shows that strategic cost management framework might represent a valuable source for understanding and managing the critical aspects related with knowledge management and measurement (specifically what a firm knows or should know, which activities should a firm perform in order to capture, develop or leverage its knowledge). In the conclusive part theoretical and methodological issues will be reported as well as future research efforts.

Underveis til fredmtiden. Kunnskapsledelse i teori og praksis., 1999

The literature of knowledge management goes back over three thousand years. In the Western world, it began with The Instructions of Amenemopet. Written around 1,000 BC, this book was a training manual for Egyptian civil servants and a guide to wise professional practice. Fragments of this document survive in the Bible. We can still read traces of Amenemopet’s advice to young managers in the Book of Proverbs (Aitken 1968: 3; Johnson 1998: x; New Jerusalem Bible: 964-5). Johnson identifies the wisdom literature of the Bible as intensely practical. The Hebrew word for wisdom – chokmah – “means skillfulness in dealing with the job that is before us,” writes Johnson (1998: viii), comparing it with the Greek word techne, “the rational application of principles aimed at making or doing something well.” Many scholars contrast the wisdom embodied in techne to the wisdom embodied in sophia. The contrast is accurate in a linguistic sense. Browning (1997: 306) describes the writers of the wisdom literature as “intellectuals but not in the Greek tradition of speculative philosophers; Hebrew wisdom was exemplified in practical skills, knowledge about how to manage one’s life and about the purpose of life.” Johnson erases this distinction. He asserts that the wisdom literature is perfect for anyone “who believes like the Greeks that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’” This person, he states, “is by nature a lover of wisdom: a philosopher” (Johnson 1998: viii). This leads us to an issue that forms the core of knowledge management, the link between speculation and experience, theory and practice, thought and behavior. This link sustains the process of knowledge creation. The process is embedded in the two phases of a rich cycle. One phase is theorizing. Theorizing transforms tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. The second phase is behavioral adaptation. Behavior transforms explicit knowledge into physical practice.