Knowledge Management Investments Research Articles

Managerial values and sustainable oriented innovation: Examining the role of knowledge exploration versus exploitation practices

PurposeLeveraging upper echelon theory and knowledge-based view of the firm, this paper aims to explore how chief executive officers’ (CEO) sustainability orientation influences explorative and exploitative knowledge management practices, which in turn influence incremental and radical sustainable innovation under boundary conditions of CEOs’ temporal focus and regional affiliation in the home country.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a nonprobability convenience sampling strategy. Using survey-based research, the authors tested the study hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling on a sample of 298 CEOs from Indian small and medium enterprises. This study also tested the reliability and validity of the study variables by using internal consistency tests and convergent and discriminant validity procedures.FindingsThe study finds that CEO sustainability orientation affects incremental and radical sustainable innovation via the mediating effect of explorative and exploitative knowledge management practices. Furthermore, CEOs’ past temporal focus increases the influence of orientation on exploitative knowledge management. In contrast, future temporal focus increases the influence of CEO sustainability orientation on exploratory knowledge management practices. Finally, CEOs from the southwest, west and northwest regions of India increase the influence of exploratory knowledge management on radical sustainable innovation.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has significant implications for understanding upper-echelon factors that drive knowledge management practices. CEO temporal focus (time orientation) and demographic aspects (regional affiliation) influence CEOs’ investment in different knowledge management and, hence, sustainable innovation management practices. However, this study does not explore cross-cultural differences and the role of the entire top management team in influencing sustainability values on sustainability innovation via knowledge management practices.Practical implicationsThis study comprehends upper-echelon factors that drive investment in knowledge management and sustainable innovation practices. Findings imply that CEOs with past and future temporal focus can influence sustainable innovation, but their investment in knowledge management strategies differs. Past temporal-focused CEOs invest more in exploitative and future temporal focus more in explorative knowledge management for influencing sustainable innovation.Originality/valueThe study provides novel insights into the influence of upper-echelon traits on knowledge management and sustainable innovation practices. Extant literature has largely explored firm-level factors such as organizational culture influencing a firm's knowledge management practices. However, by integrating the upper echelon with the knowledge-based view of the firm, we explain how the traits of the CEO, especially the temporal perspective, influence knowledge management and sustainable innovation practices of firms.

Can return on investment in knowledge management initiatives in organizations be measured?

PurposeThis paper focuses on the meanings attributed to the measurement of return on investment (ROI) in knowledge management (KM) initiatives in knowledge-intensive organizations. At the heart of this exploratory research is the introduction of a unique coherent perspective of discipline experts regarding the ROI metric, as part of their perception of assessing effectiveness in this field.Design/methodology/approachThe research begins with in-depth semi-structured personal interviews and continues with focus groups, as part of a qualitative research paradigm. The data were analyzed using a thematic analysis method, based on the grounded theory approach.FindingsThe findings provide empirical evidence regarding the significant challenges associated with the objective assessment of KM performance, which is deeply rooted in numerical-financial values. Despite the high status of ROI in the business environment, the authors find that decision-makers surprisingly avoid evaluating ROI for the most important resource of the organization, notwithstanding the immeasurable hopes that depend on this performance measure and the expectation of establishing the profitability of investment in organizational KM.Originality/valueThe uniqueness of this research is the adoption of the skeptical-critical research approach. For the first time, the authors interrogate the suitability and relevance of the general model of the ROI metric as a means of proving the value and contribution of well-managed knowledge to organizations. The authors call for adoption of a new integrative perspective for evaluating effectiveness, which will reflect the holistic set of KM in organizations.

조직공정성과 신뢰가 지식관리 관련 갈등 및 지식축적에 미치는 영향: 지식 영역성의 조절효과 분석

As effective management of individualized knowledge within an organization is recognized as a core factor in achieving sustainable performance, organizations are increasing their investment in knowledge management. However, as failure cases related to knowledge management to occur, active participation of organizational insiders is required. The purpose of this study is to suggest conflicts, which are a negative motivating factor that affects knowledge hoarding, to confirm the moderating effect of knowledge territoriality, and to suggest the direction of organizational efforts to reduce conflicts. In this study, the research hypothesis was presented through precedent research in the field of knowledge management and stress, and samples were obtained by conducting an online questionnaire to employees of organizations that introduced knowledge management policies by applying a questionnaire technique. And, the research hypothesis was verified through structural equation modeling. As a result of the analysis, role conflict and relationship conflict had a positive effect on knowledge hoarding, and knowledge territoriality strengthened the relationship between the two factors. And, organization justice and organization trust reduced individual conflicts within the organization. This study suggests a direction to reduce the negative behaviors of individuals toward knowledge management policies.

A comprehensive investigation of the critical factors influencing knowledge management strategic alignment

Despite the huge investment in Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives by many organizations, KM projects are facing a high failure rate. One of the main reasons is the lack of alignment between business and KM strategies. This study aims to identify and prioritize the factors affecting strategic alignment between business and KM strategies. A comprehensive literature review integrated with the focus group method was used to identify and classify effective factors of KM strategic alignment. Next, a survey method was conducted to evaluate and prioritize the extracted factors suggested by the experts. Further, the sign test was used to analyze the priorities of these factors using Shannon’s entropy method. The results reveal that the key factors affecting strategic alignment between business strategies and KM include knowledge-based culture, KM governance, and strategic approach to KM, communication between KM and business, top management support, human resource capabilities, environmental and competitive factors and IT management capabilities. The findings provide a comprehensive KM-business strategic framework.

Integrating knowledge in organizations: examining performance and integration difficulties

ABSTRACTThis paper builds a theoretical model and decision-making flow chart for optimizing the integration of knowledge from individuals to units, and predicting when the desired integration process will be relatively easy or difficult to implement. We argue that the integration process most likely to lead to higher unit-level performance depends on the degree to which knowledge is learnable, while the ease of implementation depends on the degree to which knowledge is tacit. Implementation challenges occur when there is a mismatch between these two dimensions. Organizations would benefit from targeting knowledge management investments at these mismatched situations.

Knowledge Management Governance: The Road to Continuous Benefits Realization

Investment in knowledge management (KM) programmes is often contentious due to the challenge of meeting the need for continuous and sustainable benefits realization. In KM, the word ‘sustainable’ describes how programmes of strategies to leverage organizational knowledge remain productive over time: that they deliver strategic value to the organization. The focus of this paper falls on the constructs of the governance of KM and on its leadership, in KM strategy devopment and implementation, including risk management, financial controls and transparent evaluation mechanisms for continuous benefits realization. This paper presents a KM governance model and explores its recent validation through six case studies of large, distributed, multinational organizations, and through these introduces the granular constructs of KM governance. Exploration of the impact of KM governance on developing and implementing KM programmes in each case study organization demonstrates that there is a clear nexus between strategic KM governance and benefits realized from those programmes.

The Significance of Knowledge Management Systems at Financial Decision Making Process

Nowadays Knowledge management has been of great interest globally. Bahraini's Bank have been given interest to IT investment in knowledge Management. This paper concentrate on the availability of Knowledge-Based System and the benefits estimated from the use of such a system in increasing the effectiveness of decisions. The paper highlights the need for an automated tool to support the decision-making process. The affect of four factors, representing the use of KMS, had been studied to see their effect on decisions. These factors are: availability of required technologies, capabilities of individuals, coordination between departments, and acceptance and trust of decision makers. Overall, the results show that there was a significant relationship between the effectiveness of decision making and the availability of required technologies, capabilities of individuals and coordination between departments. On the other hand, there was no relationship between the effectiveness of decision making and acceptance and trust of decision makers in Bahraini banks.

Combining Communication Technology Utilization and Organizational Innovation: Evidence from Canadian Healthcare Decision Makers

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Organizational Innovation (OI) are seen as the miracle of post-modernity in organizations. In this way, they are supposed to resolve most organizational problems, efficiently and rapidly. OI is highly dependent on the capacity and the investment in knowledge management (internal and external) to support decision making process and to implement significant changes. We know what explains ICT utilization (ICTU) and what determines OI development (OID) in healthcare services. Moreover, the literature tends to link ICTU to OID and vice versa. However, this dependency has never been explored empirically through the lens of roles combination. To identify the existing combined roles profiles of ICTU and OID among healthcare decision makers and determine factors of the shift from a profile to another. We did the following: (1) a structured review of the literature on healthcare management by focusing on ICTU and OID which allowed us to build two indexes and a comprehensive framework; (2) a copula methodology to identify with high precision the thresholds for ICTU and OID; and (3) a cross-sectional study based on a survey done with a sample of 942 decision makers from Canadian healthcare organizations through a multinomial logit model to identify determinants of the shift. ICTU and OID are correlated at 22% (Kendal's Tau). The joint distribution (combination) of ICTU and OID shows that four major profiles exist among decision makers in Canadian healthcare organizations: the traditional decision maker, the innovative decision maker, the technologic decision maker and the contemporary decision maker. We found out that classic factors act as barriers to the shift from one profile to the desired profile (from 1 to 4, from 2 to 4 and from 3 to 4). We have identified that the attitude toward research and relational capital are transversal barriers of shift. We have also found that some factors have a specific impact such as engaging in activities of research acquisition, the administrative position (being a manager), the preference for applied research results as source of information, the degree of novelty of research results, and the gender. Modern Canadian healthcare organizations need contemporary decision makers who use ICT and develop OI, if performance is the target. Our results let us suggest that the isolated administrative agents profile is no more effective in a dynamic and changing world. Contemporary decision makers need to be more active intellectually and to take risks in their decisions. Relying exclusively on research results and on their social network is no more helpful for a real shift. Moreover, the traditional factors, i.e. organization size, time, experience ... are no more effective, especially when we consider combined roles. We propose some practical and theoretical recommendations to support these changes.

Managing the Knowledge Supply Chain: An Organizational Learning Model of Information Technology Offshore Outsourcing

In this paper, we present an economic learning model that helps to formalize the complex relationships among an offshoring firm's knowledge levels, production costs, and coordination costs. Specifically, we model a domestic firm's use of a selective offshore strategy (i.e., offshoring only a portion of its information technology activities) to exploit, through IT investments or contractual provisions, the foreign vendor's large, scale-driven repository of production knowledge. We illustrate the conditions under which knowledge transfers during offshoring may reduce a domestic firm's in-house production costs, leading to total cost savings in both the short term and the long term. Alternatively, when knowledge transfers are not sufficiently large, some short-lived offshoring projects may generate substantial cost savings to the domestic firm; however, long-lived offshoring projects may cause a disruption in the knowledge supply chain, resulting in substantial losses in the later stages of the project. A firm that fails to realize the costs associated with such a disruption soon enough in the project life may find itself locked into a disadvantageous offshoring agreement without any recourse. However, a domestic firm may be able to overcome a disruption in its knowledge supply chain by exploiting the learning-by-doing production knowledge generated by the foreign vendor's economies of scale. The managerial implications derived from our learning model may help guide firms as they consider the impacts of offshore contracts and knowledge management investments on firm knowledge, production costs, and coordination costs.

Cutting corners: CKOs and knowledge management

PurposeRecently, the demise of the dot.com mania, coupled with slow economic growth has caused organizations to cut costs in an attempt to improve efficiency and the bottom line. Discontinuing or suspending knowledge management efforts and disbanding the chief knowledge officers' (CKOs) role is one common response from most organizations faced with these cost and efficiency pressures. The purpose of this paper is to describe why firms choose to cut knowledge management efforts and point to the deleterious long‐term effects of this course of action.Design/methodology/approachThe approach is based on discussions with executives.FindingsThe paper highlights three common reasons why firms choose to cut knowledge management efforts, namely: knowledge management is seen as a luxury, not a necessity; knowledge management is subsumed under information technology methods; and investment in knowledge management does not offer immediate results. Moreover, the paper argues that cutting knowledge management efforts does more harm than good for a corporation in the long run.Originality/valueThe paper describes techniques that CKOs should employ to gain support of their executive peers.

Knowledge management in production alliances

This paper develops a managerial model of production network organizations (PNOs), inter-firm alliances for product development and delivery, in which inter-firm network structure and knowledge management practices play a major role in venture performance. The paper addresses the issue of alignment between the adopted network structure, the scope of the joint production task, and consequent inter-firm information flow require- ments, hypothesizing that venture performance is a joint function of network structure and task integration scope. In situations with a difficult alignment between the chosen network structure, joint task scope, and information flow requirements, knowledge management investments across the PNO are proposed as a moderating factor leading to improved venture performance. The paper demonstrates the proposed model with three case studies, providing preliminary verification of the key proposition that knowledge management interventions can mediate the impact of loose integrating structures for joint production ventures that are undertaking complex joint tasks.

Capitalising Knowledge: Corporate Knowledge Management Investments

Knowledge is increasingly recognized as the key resource of business. Digital networks provide access to vast amounts of data and information but knowledge management tools and systems are required to translate this in a meaningful way. Knowledge management initiatives are unlikely to be successful unless they are integrated with business strategy, and related to the development of the core capabilities of the organisation. Sharing the discovery and synthesis of intellectual activity involves the creation of knowledge communities of practice. There is much evidence of commercially inspired corporate initiatives in this direction across all industrial sectors: leveraging existing intellectual capital; sharing best practice across multiple locations; data mining to build customer relationships; and creating knowledge networks to allow state–of–the–art solutions in professional services.

Optimizing Your Knowledge Management Investments

The key to making wise investments in knowledge management tools and technologies lies in how you approach the challenge of building a knowledge management system.

Justifying knowledge management investments

One of the most perplexing problems in Knowledge Management today is how to build business cases for KM projects. Although it is argued that knowledge itself cannot be measured, this article describes the sometimes creative methods companies are using to cost justify KM projects before they are undertaken and gauge their benefits once they are underway. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Cornwallis Emmanuel Ltd.