Business has become globalised and, for all organizational forms, knowledge is now an important organizational input factor and it now essential for managers to know how to manage knowledge in order to utilise this knowledge effectively when carrying out business operations. Managers also realize that to be able to successfully compete in a [free] trading world, they need knowledge of all possible types and from all possible sources — including company files, intangible assets, organizational processes, external repositories, and in particular, that residing in the cognition and the subconscious of their employees. In its new embodiment, knowledge can be unbounded, omnipresent, manifesting in many shapes and metaphors, and latent in many known and unknown locales. What is especially important is its new role in which it enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization in every facet of its functioning.
How the firms understand, deploy, and define the role of knowledge in operating their business will make all the difference between their success and failure, and, eventually, that of the economies in which they operate. Managers realize that the function and applicability of knowledge, and the task of knowledge management, are expanding and taking on a new form; this is important in all sizes and types of organizations (Knowledge Management News & Resources, 2008). However, managers also find that they do not know how to manage this knowledge to derive optimal benefits for their organizational objectives.
Previous KM surveys have been of little help to managers as they have focused mostly on knowledge management for large organizations or on the practices used by Information Technology (IT) professionals (Ernst & Young, 1996; Frey, 2001; Wong, 2005). These surveys believed that KM was an issue for IT and information system professionals (Coakes, 2002) and not wider in the organisation. A few authors (Frey 2001; Knowledge Management News & Resources, 2009; Okunoye & Karsten, 2002) reported that KM was important for all sizes of organizations wherever located but there was little effort to assess the functionality of KM functions across them. Some authors attempted to redress the situation by surveying smaller organizations in limited situations or sectors. However, it is clear that extant knowledge management literature does not provide the necessary techniques and tools to help practitioners develop a systemic, broad-based KM strategy, techniques, and technological tools with which to manage under to the emerging sustainability and market complexities that concern the organizational environment everywhere. This world is thought of as being VUCA by the US Armed Forces - volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (Stiehm, and Townsend, 2002).
We surveyed 1020 participants from 72 countries and whilst the responses are predominantly from the USA and the UK—an expected result due to the nature of the topic being discussed and the likelihood of such activities being performed - the third most responses however, come from China closely followed by India and Australia, and then followed by the UAE and Afghanistan, among many other, even small developing countries, such as East Timor, Trinidad and Tobago, and American Samoa, and even the Vatican. The respondents of our survey come from all levels of managing knowledge in organizations of all kinds. They represent all sizes and kinds of businesses including the Third Sector, Non-Government Organizations and SMEs, and organizations that you may not have thought of before as being knowledge-based such as the Vatican. It includes not just the senior managers responsible for KM decision-making and those who carry out the KM function, but also those who use knowledge—the knowledge workers. This breadth of survey participation gave us a unique insight into how knowledge is managed in numerous areas of organizations as well as for numerous purposes.
To enrich the findings of the survey, we got further insight into the minds of managers by conducting 17 follow-up interviews, consisting of managers from 8 companies in the USA and 2 in the UK. These interviewees gave a rich and detailed explanation of the value that Km gave their organizations and detailed how it gave them not only competitive value but strategic insights and a more effectively functioning company. This survey demonstrates that the role of knowledge and the traditional KM function in organizations has changed and requires new functionality that is strategically focused on sustainability and on innovation for the right to market.
Elayne Coakes is Senior Lecturer in Knowledge and Information Management. Westminster Business School. Her research interests lay in the sociotechnical aspects of information systems especially knowledge management systems. She is currently involved in looking at knowledge sharing in multi-cultural organisations including universities, and the potential applications of avatars in this field. Her PhD related to
Stakeholders, Systems and Boundaries: a Sociotechnical View - and looked at the process of strategic planning for information systems.
She is Editor-In-Chief of the
International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development. As a member of the BCS Sociotechnical Specialist Group she has been active in promoting this view of information systems development and implementation, and has edited a number of books in this and the knowledge management area. Her latest books are: Coakes E., (2012),
Advances in Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development 2nd book in series
, Knowledge Development and Social Change through Technology: Emerging Studies IGI Global Publications; Hershey; and Coakes E., (2011) Editor:
Advances in Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, 1st book in series,
Knowledge Development and Social Change through Technology: Emerging Studies IGI Global Publications: Hershey
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