A Method for Assessing Knowledge Loss Risk with Departing Personnel

Knowledge workers hold much of an organization’s knowledge. Unfortunately, these knowledge workers tend to be transient, and when they leave, they take the knowledge inside them. Organizations need to try to capture this knowledge but find it difficult as it is usually too late to capture this knowledge when a worker announces he/she is leaving. This chapter presents a process for assessing each worker for the risk of taking knowledge with them. The purpose of this process is to aid organizations in allocating resources to capturing the most valuable and most accessible of the knowledge potentially being lost in time for it to be captured and retained.

Police Knowledge Management Strategy

Policing is heavily dependent on information, intelligence, and knowledge. The amount of information police officers come in contact with in the course of their work is often astounding. With a more proactive and preventive approach to crime reduction, police forces have increasingly relied on information and knowledge and associated information technology in terms of knowledge management systems to improve their performance. Accordingly, the management of knowledge is a crucial aspect of police work to promote knowledge development and sharing. This chapter covers key aspects of the police knowledge management strategy, including intelligence for knowledge, management approaches, knowledge integration, knowledge categories, organizational structure, and organizational culture for knowledge management.

How Knowledge Creation Capabilities Lead to Competitive Advantage

This chapter examines the roles of organizational creativity and organizational learning effectiveness in explaining the processes through which knowledge creation capabilities help firms to obtain and sustain competitive advantage. The proposed model specifies that organizational learning effectiveness plays a pivotal role in the relationship between knowledge creation and creativity. New knowledge develops better routines that make operations more efficient and effective. As organizations learn from newly generated knowledge, not only do they improve existing processes, but dynamic capabilities also develop to integrate knowledge into creative ideas, novel solutions, and new products and services. This theoretical examination leads to the proposition that organizational learning effectiveness mediates the relationship between knowledge creation capabilities and organizational creativity. This chapter also examines whether the effect of knowledge creation processes on organizational creativity exists in all organizations or is contingent on the nature of the organization’s knowledge. Based on the common understanding that tacit and explicit knowledge differ substantially in their codifiability and transferability, the authors specify the moderating role of knowledge characteristics in the process of using knowledge management to foster organizational creativity. The theoretical examination leads to the proposition that the degree of tacitness of the organization’s critical knowledge moderates the effect of knowledge creation capabilities on organizational creativity mediated by organizational learning effectiveness. Finally, the authors argue that the degree of institutionalization of the organization’s critical knowledge moderates the effect of knowledge creation capabilities on organizational creativity, which is in turn mediated by organizational learning effectiveness. Implications for research and managerial practices are discussed.

Knowledge Management and the Roles it Plays in Achieving Superior Performance

Knowledge is one of the most critical organizational resources, and Knowledge Management (KM) has been identified as one of the key aspects in organizational strategic management. In addition to creating functional value by protecting and utilizing organizational knowledge, strategic knowledge management also serves as a central nerve system within the organization that facilitates organizational learning, organizes the market intelligence about customers and competitors, maximizes the value of organizational knowledge, and contributes towards superior organizational performances. The objectives of this chapter are to develop a theoretical model that delineates the relationship among several organizational variables that are of strategic importance to performance, including Market Orientation (MO), Learning Orientation (LO), and KM. A national survey was conducted to collect information from managers of Canadian manufacturing companies. A total of 307 informants returned the survey. Data was analyzed using Structure Equation Modeling (SEM). The results demonstrate that a firm’s KM mediates the positive influences from the firm’s LO and MO on market performance.

Harnessing Knowledge Power for Competitive Advantage

A great many organizations rely upon advancing Information Technology (IT) in their quests for competitive advantage. The problem is that as long as competitive advantage is based on IT and like resources that are obtainable or substitutable by competing organizations, it is likely to be ephemeral at best. Alternatively, competitive advantage enabled by tacit knowledge is comparatively much more sustainable, but such knowledge tends to be sticky and does not flow well through the organization. Hence, the power of tacit knowledge is great in terms of enabling and particularly sustaining competitive advantage, but the corresponding dynamics can make it difficult to capitalize upon effectively. This chapter focuses specifically on how the power of dynamic knowledge (i.e., knowledge flows) can be harnessed for competitive advantage. The authors first examine in some detail how different kinds of knowledge and other organizational resources enable competitive advantage. They then discuss the dynamics of knowledge, looking in particular at how it flows through the organization. The chapter concludes with five key insights for use and application.

Knowledge Development and Protection as Competitive Advantage

This chapter explores the different circumstances facing firms and industries regarding knowledge development and knowledge protection. Contrary to the view that more aggressive knowledge management aimed at knowledge development is good, the authors take a more balanced approach by weighing knowledge development potential against the increased vulnerability resulting from such assets being spread more widely. By identifying industries falling into different development and protection circumstances, they explore what knowledge characteristics (tacitness, complexity, specificity) might characterize those different circumstances. As a result, strategists will be better able to plan investments in knowledge management, in knowledge protection, and in competitive intelligence operations while scholars can better understand when and why to do so.

Competitive Advantage and Automated Sharing of Tacit Knowledge

In this chapter, the authors investigate how raw data, obtained from a variety of sources, can be processed into knowledge using automated techniques that will help organizations gain a competitive advantage. Firms have amassed so much data that only automated methods, such as data mining or converting existing knowledge into expert systems is possible to make any sense of it or to protect it from competitors. Further, the data that is processed may be considered tacit knowledge because it is hidden from people until it is processed. In this chapter, the authors discuss various sources of data that might help an organization achieve and sustain a competitive advantage. A firm can data mine its own production database for insight regarding its customers and markets that have previously been ignored. It might also mine social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), which has become a forum for individual preferences and activities from which the savvy organization could turn into competitive advantage. They also discuss how this knowledge can be protected from intrusion by competitors to sustain the competitive position it may achieve as a result of the discovery of knowledge from massive data sets.

A Synthesis of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management Literatures

This chapter contributes to the literature through a synthesis of the hitherto disparate organizational learning and knowledge management fields. Two distinct epistemological traditions are identified, and the literature under each tradition is synthesized separately to start with. Epistemology of possession considers knowledge as an object that can be codified, stored, retrieved, and applied to achieve organizational outcomes. One of the major contributions of this chapter is to present an integrated model of organizational learning synthesizing the frameworks of Kolb (1993), Crossan, Lane, and White (1999), and Nonaka (1994), each of which is a dominant theoretical strand within the epistemology of possession. The epistemology of practice, in contrast, assumes knowledge as an integral part of doing and as something that cannot be distinct from the process of learning. By indicating a directional attempt at synthesizing the two epistemologies themselves through the multi-faceted literature on routines, the authors make another contribution to the literature. They illustrate implications for competitive advantage throughout the chapter.

Exploring Knowledge Types and Knowledge Protection in Organizations

Knowledge management has emerged as an area of enquiry for managing organizational knowledge. It is a key driver for organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage and an effective way to address economic problems including losses related to high turnovers and retiring workforce. It also has been considered an important weapon for maximizing the potential of knowledge for sustainable performance for public and private organizations. Knowledge is a critical resource for organizations, and the knowledge resources need to be properly recognized and used for achieving organizational goals. Knowledge has limited value if it is not shared within the organization. The aim of the chapter is to examine the relationship between knowledge types and knowledge protection. It will also identify several approaches (i.e. tools and programs) or mechanisms for protecting the knowledge from loss.

Using ERG Theory as a Lens to Understand the Sharing of Academic Tacit Knowledge

This chapter provides a direct view of the higher education environment in a transition economy. It reports research findings on barriers to sharing knowledge among Vietnamese academic and managerial colleagues, focusing on three factors: time, capital, and management capacity. It draws on data from focus groups and from in-depth interviews of Vietnamese members of faculty from six major universities. A key finding of this study is that work-overload leaves little time for collaborative research. Together with insufficient English skills and bureaucratic management, it contributes to measurable levels of cheating and corruption in education that in turn lead to low quality and quantity of international academic publications and of patents. This finding indicates that there is a strong link with both Existence, Relatedness, and Growth (ERG) theory and Maslow’s theory of need with both the quality and quantity of international publications produced by Vietnamese academics.