Proposal of a knowledge audit metric based upon a compared analysis in private and public organizations

Abstract

The Study approaches the organizational analysis known as knowledge-audit, and in particular proposes to extend the structure of the related models over the mere analysis of the organizational knowledge including the knowledge-management capabilities. A specific assessment-process of the knowledge-management capabilities is thus structured basing upon a specific grid whose components address the organization’s intellectual capital, from one side, and the main perspectives of the balanced-scorecard [Kaplan, Norton, 1996; 2001] from others. In particular, by applying such grid is here produced an estimate of the correlation occurring between the efficiency of the knowledge-management system and the business performances of the organization; and basing on such correlation it is defined a metric addressing the possible existing relationships among: (a) the support level provided by the knowledge-management system to the organization’s intellectual capital components; (b) the improvements of the same system achievable by taking a changes in some of the main constituting components (i.e. technology, personal competence, and personal motivation); and (c) the increases in the business performances. It is then proved that such metric not only allows to estimate the effectiveness of the knowledge-management systems but also allows to individuate those interventions, that must be taken to boost the capabilities of the same system, in terms of technology, personal motivation and personal competencies. Such metric is tested in the Study’s empirical part on two main samples constituted by different subjects; the first is constituted by two subgroups of private technology consulting firms - one operating worldwide and the other operating locally in the Southern Italy area; the second instead is constituted by several different public organizations that have been selected among Italian public administration bodies, Italian Public Agencies (i.e. INPS, Agenzia Dogane, etc.), public research centers, and international organizations. Specifically, the deep difference presumably existing between the samples in the progress of their own operational knowledge-management systems is here used as reference term to test the intrinsic consistency of such metric as very different values characterize the estimates produced by applying this metric: over proving the meaningfulness of the metric the positive exit of the test allows to define a quantitative estimate of the real divide existing between the subjects and to propose a related suitable strategy for improving the knowledge-management systems of the same subjects.