Knowledge Management - Time to Rethink the Discipline Nowshade Kabir Grenoble Graduate School of Business, Grenoble, France
[email protected] Abstract Knowledge management (KM) is going through a challenging time. Interest in knowledge management in the corporate world is waning across the board. According to a major consulting firm, for the first time since its inception as a vital management tool in early 1990s KM has fallen out of management's priority list this year. Many even started to question the viability of KM as a concept and its right to be an academic discipline. There are multiple issues that have facilitated the growing ambiguity around the concept. First, ever since the concept emerged, many have opposed the name knowledge management. According to this group, this moniker is a misnomer and an oxymoron. They consider that knowledge cannot be managed hence the name does not make any sense. Their rational is as, often, subject name embodies and exemplifies what the subject is about it creates considerable opacity in the understanding of the true nature of the notion. Second, the concept of knowledge management evolved from the idea of information technology management. Technology is a key enabler and a pillar of knowledge management. However, undue focus on technology in the early stage of knowledge management has, in many cases, brought dubious results putting a damper on the enthusiastic sprouting of knowledge management use. Third, lack of proper theoretical and philosophical foundation bifurcated the concept in two ideologies: subjectivist and objectivist. Each of these views propagates its strategy and focuses on different priorities. Recent studies show that the KM initiative based on just one of the two strategies does not always produce desired outcome. Fourth, in today's evolving market, management concerns and needs are changing rapidly. Because of the superficial constraint internally imposed by KM as a discipline, it is failing to engulf new adjacent concepts as they emerge. Big data, for example, is a case in point. Grounding on the ideas taken from previously emerged new disciplines the author argues that the concept of knowledge management should be augmented and renamed as " Knowledge Science." The domain of the new discipline, the paper concludes, should encompass all aspects of knowledge not just management of knowledge activities. Keywords: knowledge science, knowledge management, knowledge definition, epistemology, philosophy of knowledge
Introduction Knowledge management was introduced around early 1990s as a tool for organizations to take advantage of intellectual capital and other knowledge assets and enhance productivity. It is always championed as a practice-based discipline. Its inception and growth are closely related to application of its concepts and tools in an organizational context. Buoyed by new technologies and observing rising market need, consultants are the one who initially popularized the concept of KM. Soon, academics have also started to jump on the bandwagon, taking into consideration that the idea of managing knowledge related activities bode well with 1
resource-based views of the firm (Barney, 1991). At early stage of its development, the contribution to the knowledge growth of the discipline from practitioners was significant. However, lately the connection between the academic research findings in KM discipline and their practical applications have drift apart considerably (Booker et al., 2008), which highlights the problem this still nascent discipline is facing. Since 1993, Bain and Company has been conducting a survey of management tools and trends to find out executive's opinion and attitude towards various issues related to economic cycles. One of the priorities of this survey is to find which management tools work and which don't. For the first time in the last 25 years of history of the survey, KM dropped out from the list of most popular tools (Rigby and Bilodeau, 2013). It demonstrates a noticeable indication of declining interest in knowledge management in the corporate world. Virtually non-existence exposure of knowledge management lately in mainstream business and technology journals is another telltale sign of a looming stagnation in KM field. A practice-based discipline, naturally, cannot sustain its growth in the academic field if it decouples from its original purpose and fails short of translating its findings in real-world practice. What are the causes of diminished interest in KM? What academics can do about it? What should be the possible transformation required for KM to evolve into a full-fledged sustainable academic discipline? These questions worry academics and practitioners alike. The remaining of the article consists of an effort to find the causes of the problem by examining philosophical and practical issues behind present predicament and offers a plausible solution. Background Review Ever since KM started to gain prominence, its imminent demise, claiming that it is just a mere management fad, has been propagated by a fairly large group of scholars. In 2002, Wilson, in a rather caustic paper, claims that, like numerous previous management fads and fashion, knowledge management is also an ephemeral fad – a utopian deal – that will disappear over time. He castigates KM as being a marketing ploy to promote products developed by consulting firms based on two elements: information management and work practice management. He argues the culture of sharing knowledge generated by employees through communities of practices where members can take advantage of knowledge for the benefit of the organization is an illusory idea (Wilson, 2002). Alvesson and Karreman (2001) adduce knowledge and management both were matured concepts, what was new is the combination of these two ingredients. The advances of information and communication technology have facilitated the emergence of this new notion. The problem lies in the difficulties of conceptualization, what the practitioners consider as knowledge and knowing? The conundrum is if the definition of knowledge is so ambiguous, how can one be sanguine that knowledge is manageable? They hypothesize the concept of knowledge management will inevitably fall apart if the balance between the two ingredients is shaken. Scarbrough and Swan (2001) assert with the advent of the knowledge economy, globalization and technological advancement, knowledge is considered as the critical resource of productivity, innovation and growth. Naturally, management of most companies regard intellectual properties highly and feel the importance of exploiting organizational knowledge asset. Business consultants have repackaged many tools and practices under the name of KM, 2
which were previously developed in different contexts, to take advantage of the situation. The technology oriented focus in early literature of KM rather than exploration of better understanding of knowledge and its effects exhibit this trend. The enthusiastic adoption of KM and its similarity to the first half of bell shaped popularity curve (Abrahamson, 1991) also shows that KM is more likely a management fashion and its downfall from glory is imminent. Even McElroy (2003, p. 43) in his book voices concerns about the first iteration of knowledge management use, consenting it was nothing more than "yesterday's information technologies trotted out in today's more fashionable clothes." As several studies show, despite this gloomy outlook from many scholars, knowledge management has succeeded to transform into an academic discipline or at least in the process of doing so. Ponzi and Koenig (2002) after doing a comparison review of KM with several other past management fads and fashions came to the conclusion that KM has successfully survived the threshold of 5 years, that are the period usually required for a fad to lose its luster. They expect that over time KM will mature and evolve into a more transparent and well-defined concept. In a 2010 paper, Hislop observed that the trend of academic publications in knowledge management from 1998 to 2008 did not correspond to the bell-shape curve pattern that reflects a management fashion or fad. He suggests that the claims of the previously mentioned writers such as Wilson, who predicted KM's impending demise, did not materialize. Moreover, the growing academic interest, the increasing number of scholarly journals dedicated to the field and the amount of conferences and seminars determined that KM has been institutionalized and became an academic discipline. However, he cautions that not all management fashions and fads fall under the pattern of the bell curve, what the next decade will bring to the state of KM is still remain to be seen. Serenko and Bontis (2013) consider that knowledge management is a fully-fledged but young discipline. Being multidisciplinary in nature, its theoretical root is deeply ingrained in various other subjects including information technology, organizational science and cognitive science. It has sufficiently institutionalized, as a discipline with various educational courses, seminars, conferences and core theories, but it is not apparent if it will ever become a reference background for other scientific disciplines. Analyzing from the perspective of management fashion theory Grant (2011) concludes the evidences suggest KM went through a gestation period, a cycle of rapid growth and presently firmly positioned at the level of stabilized interest and do not show any sign of immediate decline. Others take a more cautious outlook and deliberate that while vibrant and emerging field, KM is yet to become a scientific discipline. Grossman (2007) avers that KM is a popular subject matter in doctoral research; the amount of dissertation in this area and varieties of topics examined has been growing consistently since 1998. However, it still did not become a core subject in the undergraduate curriculum, the various university-based certification and continuous education programs. After all these years, academic integration of KM is still quite sluggish. The Concept of Knowledge Management 3
There is a little doubt that knowledge is a critical asset for any company. A firm's capabilities to combine its organizational dynamic capabilities with future potential of technology by applying existing knowledge allow the firm to develop new applications from prior knowledge (Kogut and Zander, 1992). To streamline and improve the efficiency and quality of a number of organizational processes, understanding how knowledge integrates and flows throughout the firm is necessary (Grant, 1996). Moreover, firm's competitive advantage and operational success largely depend on its ability to identify, integrate and utilize knowledge successfully (Grant, 1996; Volberda, 1996; Zahra and George, 2002). Indeed, sharing, learning, absorbing and overall flows of knowledge within different parts of the company and with external sources are indispensable. These activities produce more prospects of new knowledge generation and creation of new process-related, strategic and creative combinations. The result of this for organizations is more innovative products, services and ideas (Birkinshaw et al., 2008). Innovation, in particular, is highly susceptive to appropriate knowledge use. KM is an essential concept, tool and factor in taking advantage of the firm's knowledge resource. A number of empirical researches have proven the positive influence of KM on firm's performance and competitiveness (See, for example, Lee and Choi, 2003; Gloet and Terziovski, 2004; Darroch, 2005; Zack et al., 2009; Kianto, 2011). If KM is so beneficial why the practical use of KM is diminishing in an alarming speed? What are the root-causes of this problem? How KM field can survive and flourish in this environment? The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Analysis of some of the problems that KM as a discipline face, which includes KM's excessive defragmentation and the intensification of the gap between practices and academic theories in KM discipline. Next, a proposal to enhance the domain of KM under the name of knowledge science is offered as a proactive approach in saving the discipline. Divergence in Knowledge Management In present knowledge economy for attaining and sustaining competitive advantage managing knowledge related activities are of paramount importance. In the era of heightened global competition, sophisticated customers with changing demand, rapid technological advancement and ever-changing corporate environment, superior performance requires taking quick, evaluated and precise decisions from both employees and management. Without access to relevant knowledge in a timely manner, this becomes a difficult task. Knowledge management supports the flow of knowledge originated from external and internal sources through various knowledge related processes and a vital tool in making this task easier. KM initiatives require design and deployment of tools, processes, systems, structures and culture (David and Fahey, 2000) The purpose of KM is to create economic value by growing knowledge asset and by improving productivity and innovation through developing, sharing and applying knowledge. Knowledge related activities in KM imply knowledge processes of generating, integrating, codifying, applying, storing, mapping, sharing and transferring (Marr et al., 2003). Since knowledge management processes are a linear continuation, there is no commonly accepted specific boundary between one process from the other. One way of categorizing it is to divide the processes between the ones used for enhancing firm's knowledge capital from the others, which are concerned with knowledge application (Grant and Grant, 2008). These processes, as a result, have been organized and classified in many 4
different ways (For some early works, see Wiig, 1997; Leonard-Barton, 1995; Skyrme and Amidon, 1997). The improvement of these processes plays the primary role in any KM initiative. A generic view of KM is it consists of processes, procedures and techniques used for extracting the most value from organizational assets (Teece, 2000). From previous discourse and this definition of KM, it seems that the notion of KM is simple, understandable, goaloriented and fairly transparent. However, the reality is more complex and the concept is, unfortunately, mired with ambiguity. The opacity around the conceptual understanding of KM stems from individual practitioner or academic's philosophical views of the world, educational background, personal experience, cultural background and goals. As a result, from early on KM divided into two distinct tracks. The first one is concerned about information technology aspect and the second one the human aspect (Sveiby, 1996). Bollinger and Smith (2001) observe that there are three different approaches to KM: a) Information and communication technology related issues (Borghoff and Pareschi, 1998), b) Human resource related issues and c) Value chain related issues. Although, there are three pillars of KM: people, processes and technology, instead of banking on all three of these components in an integrative manner, the KM community is quite fragmented in accordance with members' philosophical perspective, preferences and training. Because of this the focus is often on just one or two of these pillars. A large quantity of available definitions of KM, ambiguous and inconsistent nature of some of them validates this view (Dalkir, 2005). The problem related to different epistemological and ontological assumptions not only pursue knowledge management in particular, but also it has always been a critical issue for most social and organizational sciences. Subjectivism and Objectivism The nature of knowledge, how it becomes known, what is the relationship between knowledge and mind, these questions torment not just philosophers. In KM, these questions are especially critical as knowledge, its characteristics and its categories with all their complexity are the main subjects of interest here. There are two primary and distinct philosophical assumptions related to knowledge. Positivist epistemological view espouses the idea of empiricism that knowledge can be attained only through sense perception. Its objectivist ontological basis emphasizes that the reality exists independent of the human mind. The subjectivist paradigm based on rationalism, on the other hand, considers that reality is not an absolute compound, it is constructed by human mind and knowledge is gained through reasoning. Interpretivists and social constructionists, basically, subscribe to subjectivist view with their own interpretation of the world and knowledge construct (Deetz, 1996; Schultze and Stabell, 2004) Deetz (1996), however, chastises the preoccupation with subjective objective controversy by some scholars. From the research perspective of qualitative and quantitative his position makes sense since a phenomenon can be external as well as internal. In many cases, it is difficult to draw a rigid boundary. However, in the case of KM this extreme plurality is having a detrimental effect on the discipline itself. Discussions 5
The surge in interest in KM in 1990s occurred thanks to a combination of some unique factors. They include new technologies, reduction of cost in storage capacity and processors, increasing importance of knowledge as a primary resource of productivity, cost-effective knowledge transfer thanks to the Internet, globalization and perceived understanding of the complex nature of knowledge and its impact on the organization (Prusak, 2001). As various writers noted KM was initially promoted by consultants as a new concept supported by IT and on the first iteration of KM it was predominantly technology oriented. In the KM literature of that time, although, it generally covered a large domain, it was common practice for many scholars to interchange the word "information" with knowledge (Wilson, 2002). Because of this objectification of knowledge at the beginning of KM's diffusion the positivist approach to the KM was the prevailing epistemological theory. After all science and technology are intertwined and scientific methods are the dominant views in IT and scientific community. However, the spectacular failure of many KM projects, disappointment from the technological solutions related to KM processes and immaterialized expectations changed the course of priority in the organizational KM initiatives. These issues eventually helped subjectivist paradigm to gain upper hand (e.g., Gamble and Blackwell, 1996; Fahey and Prusak, 1998; Disterer, 2001; Atwood, 2002). The focus of many KM projects, as a result, moved towards community of practices and other social construct aspects of KM. There are different reasons why technology and document oriented knowledge management system (KMS) initiatives tend to fail in the early years. KM depended on inadequate technology (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Apart from human factors, i.e. motivation, knowledge hoarding, cultural bias, lack of leadership and others, the repository based KMS projects were fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons. Comparing to contemporary technological advances, in those days almost all crucial tools for a robust knowledge management system were primitive and in early stage of their growth cycle. While most documents are text-based and unstructured, there were limited search capacity to extract vital information from the available documents in the repositories and use them for a just-in-time decision-making (Weber and Aha, 2003). It was true about knowledge identification, aggregation and assimilation to the repositories as well. The structure, framework, database and interface were built based on the capability of the available technology and financial ability of the organizations not from human interaction perspective (Akhavan and Pezeshkan, 2014). The complex, cumbersome and lack of user-friendliness were some of the reasons why user engagement fell short of expectations in many of these projects. The bottom line is the technology was simply not potent enough for the ambitious KM projects. The shift of focus to the subjective approach also accelerated by several other factors. Nonaka's (1995) interpretation of Polanyi's tacit knowing and its impact on knowledge creation and subsequently competitive advantage found large followers among both academics and practitioners. The academics were fascinated with the concept of tacit knowledge and knowledge's clear influence on innovation, productivity and competitiveness (Teece, 2008). A number of practitioners by that time became disgruntled with many knowledge management systems' apparent shortcoming. The new influx of practitioners and many of the academics from non-science and technology background were also inclined to favor the interpretive paradigm. Soon, the dominant perspective in KM became the social and contextual aspects with the views that the point of analysis for knowledge is practice. Knowledge can only be understood taking into account the context where it is applied (Brown and Duguid, 2001). When people interact with their surroundings and solve problems a process of knowing takes 6
place, this knowledge is inseparable from the process (Cook and Brown, 1999; Orlikowski, 2002). As resource allocation for KMS implementation started to dry up, at the same time advent of new Internet technologies allowed to simplify some of the tasks related to KM, a large number of technology oriented KM practitioners moved over to other areas such as business intelligence, business analytics and decision support systems. For example, Davenport, one of the early evangelists of KM, shifted his attention to business analytics (Davenport and Harris, 2013). As a result, in early to mid 2000, an interesting trend became noticeable. The contribution to scholarly works from the academics showed sign of vibrant growth while the impacts from practitioners dramatically reduced (Hislop, 2010). The situation has exacerbated since then. There are even fewer practitioners participating in the development of the knowledge base of KM discipline today (Sorenko and Bontis, 2013). Being a practice-based discipline, KM's success largely depends on the implementation of theories and concepts generated by the discipline in the corporate world. Lack of interest from practitioners portends an ominous sign and probable impending downfall of the discipline unless steps are taken in the right direction. It can be theorized KM to establish itself as a true scientific discipline and spur new interest in KM, its domain has to expand. It has to include subjects from the theoretical basis of KM such as strategic management, information economics, organizational culture, structure, behavior, Artificial Intelligence, quality management and organizational performance management, education, philosophy, industrial and organizational psychology, library and information science, human resource management and talent management (Beskarville and Dulipovici, 2006; Prusak, 1996) and others. Areas such as big data, business analytics, data mining, and decision support systems should be an integral part of this domain. The domain can be advanced under the umbrella name of knowledge science. Management disciplines by nature are experience and application based. Influences stemmed from various social science, science and technology subjects, as mentioned, are already having impact on KM due to previous affiliation of many scholars and practitioners with one of these subjects prior to working on KM. Certainly, the cross pollination of these subjects with knowledge science will work as a further impetus for new revolutionary ideas and innovation. Research in the area of knowledge science will also intensify with new systematic and multidisciplinary approach with some direct correlation with practices. What possible benefits this more encompassing discipline will bring? There are at least three immediate positive impacts. First, a larger domain will open possibilities to amalgamate new ideas, frameworks, systems and methodologies. Second, the domain will be not just application-oriented similar to most management discipline; it will have scope and theoretical base drawn from other social, natural and technological disciplines. Third, it will avoid being a niche-focused subject. While the subject areas to study within knowledge management realm are expanding, the KM focus is narrowing and risking transforming into a subject like quality management, business process management (BPM) and process reengineering. Knowledge science will enhance the horizon of KM from its phenomenological focus and reposition it to all aspects of knowledge.
7
Conclusion The practical and theoretical challenges for knowledge management as a discipline are still lying in its lack of clear theoretical foundation, specificity of the discipline's boundary and subjects that it includes. Knowledge science is not a novel idea. Nakamori (2013) claims knowledge science is a problem-oriented interdisciplinary field concerned about knowledge management, management of technology, knowledge creation, synthesize and discovery of supportive elements and innovation theory. The goal of knowledge science is to construct a better knowledge-based society. Agreeing with the goal of knowledge science stipulated by him, it could be said that the domain needs to be enhanced even further with the subjects described earlier. Often emergence of new disciplines in any field starts with ideas that are simple yet powerful enough to instigate a series of incremental or in some cases radical changes in people’s perception. The traction of the antagonism of novel views and old school builds a foundation for the proliferation of new theories and supporting empirical researches. The outcome of these activities at one point induces a paradigm shift firmly imposing required footing for the new discipline. According to Kuhn (2012) this paradigm change occurs either through the discovery of new facts or by inventions. The process of discovery commences with the awareness of certain anomaly that cannot be explained by available scientific theories. Repeated failure of the existing theories compels to inspect the anomaly from fundamentally different perspectives and develop new theories that can resolve the puzzle. When new theories become acceptable by the majority of the experts of the scientific field in defining the anomaly, and the phenomenon is no longer considered as an anomaly, it can be confirmed that a paradigm shift has taken place. The evolvement of the new paradigm, however, suggests that the underlying theories are better than the previous ones but they are by no means exhaustive. In reality, the new theories just introduce panoply of open possibilities and expose new facts for further research and verification. KM is not a new paradigm. However, it still needs to venture into adjacent areas relevant to knowledge, discover and combine new theories, and evolve in the process. It would be beneficial for advancing KM’s cause and ultimately contribute positively to the formation of the new discipline. Agreeing with Heidegger's argument that separation of the object and the subject creates imbalance in the unity of being-in-the-word (Winograd and Flores, 1986), the author believes positivist and interpretive approaches are not contradictory. For example, in the case of KM, knowledge generated from data and information using technology can be complemented with subjective views of the participants who are conducting the assignment. One instance of this is big data! Patterns found in the data are extracted using technology but the real value of the patterns is only generated after analysts interpret and use it in decision-making. Many subjectivists, especially, constructivists may not agree with the approach of reconciliation. As they view positivist beliefs as utterly different from their own philosophical assumptions and consider that interpretive research result is supposed to supplant outcomes from positivist tests not complement (Orlikowski and Baroudi, 1991). Nevertheless, a pluralist approach is essential for KM if it has to augment and metamorphose into a true scientific discipline. References
8
1. Abrahamson, E. (1996). Management fashion. Academy of management review, 21(1), 254285. 2. Akhavan, P., & Pezeshkan, A. (2014). Knowledge management critical failure factors: a multi-case study. VINE, 44(1), 2-2. 3. Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. (2001). Odd couple: making sense of the curious concept of knowledge management. Journal of management studies,38(7), 995-1018. 4. Atwood, M. E. (2002, January). Organizational memory systems: challenges for information technology. In System Sciences, 2002. HICSS. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 919-927). IEEE. 5. Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage.Journal of management, 17(1), 99-120. 6. Baskerville, R., & Dulipovici, A. (2006). The theoretical foundations of knowledge management. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 4(2), 83-105. 7. Birkinshaw, J., Hamel, G., & Mol, M. J. (2008). Management innovation.Academy of management Review, 33(4), 825-845. 8. Bollinger, A. S., & Smith, R. D. (2001). Managing organizational knowledge as a strategic asset. Journal of knowledge management, 5(1), 8-18. 9. Booker, L. D., Bontis, N., & Serenko, A. (2008). The relevance of knowledge management and intellectual capital research. Knowledge and Process Management, 15(4), 235-246. 10. Borghoff, U. M., & Pareschi, R. (Eds.). (1998). Information technology for knowledge management. Springer. 11. Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2001). Knowledge and organization: A social-practice perspective. Organization science, 12(2), 198-213. 12. Cook, S. D., & Brown, J. S. (1999). Bridging epistemologies: The generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing.Organization science, 10(4), 381400. 13. Darroch, J. (2005). Knowledge management, innovation and firm performance. Journal of knowledge management, 9(3), 101-115. 14. Davenport, T. H., & Harris, J. G. (2013). Competing on analytics: the new science of winning. Harvard Business Press. 15. Davenport, T. H., & Prusak, L. (1998). Working knowledge: Managing what your organization knows. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. 16. David, W., & Fahey, L. (2000). Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management. The Academy of management executive, 14(4), 113-127. 17. Deetz, S. (1996). Crossroads-describing differences in approaches to organization science: Rethinking Burrell and Morgan and their legacy.Organization science, 7(2), 191-207. 18. Disterer, G. (2001, January). Individual and social barriers to knowledge transfer. In System Sciences, 2001. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 7pp). IEEE. 19. Fahey, L., & Prusak, L. (1998). The eleven deadliest sins of knowledge management. California management review, 40(3). 20. Gamble, P. R., & Blackwell, J. (2001). Knowledge management: A state of the art guide. Kogan Page Publishers. 21. Gloet, M., & Terziovski, M. (2004). Exploring the relationship between knowledge management practices and innovation performance. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 15(5), 402-409. 22. Grant, K. (2011). Knowledge Management, An Enduring but Confusing Fashion. Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(2). 23. Grant, K. A., & Grant, C. T. (2008). Developing a Model of Next Generation Knowledge Management. Issues in Informing Science & Information Technology, 5. 9
24. Grant, R. M. (1996). Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm. Strategic management journal, 17, 109-122. 25. Grossman, M. (2007). The Emerging Academic Discipline of Knowledge Management. Journal of information systems education, 18(1). 26. Hislop, D. (2010). Knowledge management as an ephemeral management fashion?. Journal of Knowledge Management, 14(6), 779-790. 27. Kianto, A. (2011). The influence of knowledge management on continuous innovation. International Journal of Technology Management, 55(1), 110-121. 28. Kimiz, D. (2005). Knowledge management in theory and practice. McGill University. 29. Kogut, B., & Zander, U. (1992). Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology. Organization science, 3(3), 383-397. 30. Kuhn, T. S. (2012). The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago press. 31. Lee, H., & Choi, B. (2003). Knowledge management enablers, processes, and organizational performance: an integrative view and empirical examination.Journal of management information systems, 20(1), 179-228. 32. Leonard-Barton, D. (1995). Wellsprings of knowledge: Building and sustaining the sources of innovation. Harvard Business Press. 33. Marr, B., Gupta, O., Pike, S., & Roos, G. (2003). Intellectual capital and knowledge management effectiveness. Management Decision, 41(8), 771-781. 34. McElroy, M. W. (2003). The new knowledge management: Complexity, learning, and sustainable innovation. Routledge. 35. Nakamori, Y. (2013). Knowledge and Systems Science: Enabling Systemic Knowledge Synthesis. CRC Press. 36. Nonaka, I. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Oxford university press. 37. Orlikowski, W. J. (2002). Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing. Organization science, 13(3), 249-273. 38. Orlikowski, W. J., & Baroudi, J. J. (1991). Studying information technology in organizations: Research approaches and assumptions. Information systems research, 2(1), 128. 39. Ponzi, L., & Koenig, M. (2002). Knowledge management: another management fad. Information Research, 8(1), 8-1. 40. Prusak, L. (1996). The knowledge advantage. Strategy & Leadership, 24(2), 6-8. 41. Prusak, L. (2001). Where did knowledge management come from?. IBM systems journal, 40(4), 1002-1007. 42. Rigby, D., & Bilodeau, B. (2013). Management Tools & Trends 2013. Bain & Company. 43. Scarbrough, H., & Swan, J. (2001). Explaining the diffusion of knowledge management: the role of fashion. British Journal of Management, 12(1), 3-12. 44. Schultze, U., & Stabell, C. (2004). Knowing what you don’t know? Discourses and contradictions in knowledge management research. Journal of Management Studies, 41(4), 549-573. 45. Serenko, A., & Bontis, N. (2013). Global ranking of knowledge management and intellectual capital academic journals: 2013 update. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(2), 307-326. 46. Skyrme, D. J., & Amidon, D. M. (1997). Creating the knowledge-based business. Wimbledon, London, UK: Business Intelligence Limited. 47. Sveiby, K. E. (1996). Transfer of knowledge and the information processing professions. European Management Journal, 14(4), 379-388. 10
48. Teece, D. (2008). Technological know-how, organizational capabilities, and strategic management: business strategy and enterprise development in competitive environments. David J. Teece, TECHNOLOGICAL KNOW-HOW, ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITIES, AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: BUSINESS STRATEGY AND ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT IN COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS, World Scientific Publishing Co. 49. Teece, D. J. (2000). Strategies for managing knowledge assets: the role of firm structure and industrial context. Long range planning, 33(1), 35-54. 50. Volberda, H. W. (1996). Toward the flexible form: How to remain vital in hypercompetitive environments. Organization science, 7(4), 359-374. 51. Weber, R. O., & Aha, D. W. (2003). Intelligent delivery of military lessons learned. Decision support systems, 34(3), 287-304. 52. Wiig, K. M. (1997). Knowledge management: where did it come from and where will it go?. Expert systems with applications, 13(1), 1-14. 53. Wilson, T. D. (2002). The nonsense of knowledge management. Information research, 8(1), 8-1. 54. Winograd, T., & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding computers and cognition: A new foundation for design. Intellect Books. 55. Zack, M., McKeen, J., & Singh, S. (2009). Knowledge management and organizational performance: an exploratory analysis. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13(6), 392-409. 56. Zahra, S. A., & George, G. (2002). Absorptive capacity: A review, reconceptualization, and extension. Academy of management review, 27(2), 185-203.
11
