Knowledge Management

Knowledge is an important organizational resource. Unlike other inert organizational resources, the application of existing knowledge has the potential to generate new knowledge. Not only can knowledge be replenished in use, it can also be combined and recombined to generate new knowledge. Once created, knowledge can be articulated, shared, stored, and re-contextualized to yield options for the future. For all of these reasons, knowledge has the potential to be applied across time and space to yield increasing returns (Garud & Kumaraswamy, 2005).

Knowledge Management in Law Firms

Law enforcement is of concern to law firms. A law firm can be understood as a social community specializing in the speed and efficiency in the creation and transfer of legal knowledge (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Many law firms represent large corporate enterprises, organizations, or entrepreneurs with a need for continuous and specialized legal services that can only be supplied by a team of lawyers. The client is a customer of the firm, rather than a particular lawyer. According to Galanter and Palay (1991, p. 5), relationships with clients tend to be enduring:

Stages of Knowledge Management Systems

Knowledge management systems refer to a class of information systems applied to manage organizational knowledge. These systems are IT applications to support and enhance the organizational processes of knowledge creation, storage and retrieval, transfer, and application (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). The knowledge management technology stage model presented in this chapter is a multistage model proposed for organizational evolution over time. Stages of knowledge management technology are a relative concept concerned with IT’s ability to process information for knowledge work. The knowledge management technology stage model consists of four stages (Gottschalk, 2005). When applied to law enforcement in the following chapters, the stages are labeled officer-to-technology, officer-to-officer, officer-to-information, and officer-to-application.

Policing Research Studies

Holgersson (2005) identified and described, in his doctoral dissertation, different types of knowledge that are part of police officers’ practice. This case description is based on his work. Even though an intervention usually forces a police officer to apply several different skills, Holgersson (2005) has chosen to discuss different forms of professional knowledge separately, in order to make things easier to comprehend for the reader. In general, a large part of police officers’ professional knowledge, as well as professional knowledge in many other contexts, is complex and difficult to describe and explain in words. The police profession is distinguished by the broad range of skills that are required, and by the time pressure under which actions often must be taken.

Officer-to-Application Systems

nformation systems solving knowledge problems are made available to knowledge workers and knowledge seekers. Artificial intelligence is applied in these systems. Expert systems, decision support systems, document management systems, intelligent search engines, and relational database tools represent some of the technologies and techniques developed to support Stage 4. Officer-to-application systems will only be successful if they are built on a thorough understanding of law enforcement. Therefore, this chapter concentrates on presenting two important knowledge application tasks in police investigations: profiling and “cross+check.” Offender profiling and cross+check in police investigations are examples of law enforcement work that can benefit from technologies such as artificial intelligence, knowledge-based systems, and case-based reasoning systems (Becerra-Fernandez, Gonzalez, & Sabherwal, 2004).

Officer-to-Information Systems

Information from knowledge workers is stored and made available to everyone in the police force who is in need of, and eligible for this information. Data-mining techniques can be applied here by law enforcement personnel to find relevant information, and combine information in data warehouses. Search engines and Web browsers enable police officers to quickly search and find information in criminal cases.

Officer-to-Officer Systems

Officer-to-officer systems are found at Stage 2 of the stages-of-growth model for knowledge management technology. Information about who knows what is made available to all police officers, and to selected, outside partners. At Stage 2, organizations apply the personalization strategy, which implies that knowledge is tied to the person who developed it, and is shared mainly through person-to-person contact.

Knowledge in Police Work

The public sector is turning to knowledge management, having recognized that they too face competition in funding and from alternative services. Increasingly, customers of the public sector are demanding higher service quality, particularly in the area of e-government. Services, particularly e-services, are expected to be available all the time with immediate response, simplified, and with one-stop processing. According to Luen and Al-Hawamdeh (2001), knowledge management is thus a natural solution to improve operations and enhance customer service. Large organizations around the world are implementing knowledge management.

Police Work in Value Shops

To comprehend the value that information technology provides to organizations, we must first understand the way a particular organization conducts business, and how information systems affect the performance of various component activities within the organization. Understanding how firms differ is a central challenge for both theory and practice of management. For a long time, Porter’s (1985) value chain was the only value configuration known to managers. Stabell and Fjeldstad (1998) have identified two alternative value configurations. A value shop schedules activities and applies resources in a fashion that is dimensioned and appropriate to the needs of the client’s problem, while a value chain performs a fixed set of activities that enables it to produce a standard product in large numbers. Examples of value shops are professional service firms, as found in medicine, law, architecture, and engineering. A value network links clients or customers who are, or wish to be interdependent. Examples of value networks are telephone companies, retail banks, and insurance companies.

Officer-to-Technology Systems

Knowledge management, as a field of study, is concerned with simplifying and improving the process of sharing, distributing, creating, capturing, and understanding knowledge. Hence, knowledge management has direct relevance to policing. So much so that Europol has a Knowledge Management Centre (KMC) at The Hague in The Netherlands. Europol regularly updates its databases at KMC to ensure it keeps abreast of new developments in technology, science, or other specialized fields in order to provide optimal law enforcement.