Knowledge Acquisition and Transfer in Developing Countries

This investigation explored knowledge acquisition and transfer practice in Egyptian software firms. It used a combination of a cross-sectional field survey of 38 firms and an in-depth qualitative analysis of 14 firms. Although most of the firms in the sample recognize the importance of knowledge, their idiosyncrasies appear to affect the way knowledge is acquired and transferred. The firms were found to have a limited use of their software developers’ initiatives, R&D, and the academic and research institutions as sources for knowledge acquisition. They also were found to have limited capabilities in transferring and sharing knowledge. The Egyptian culture is rich in social and emotional capital, which can play an important role in building relationships, facilitating the exchange of knowledge, and sharing experience. The Egyptian software firms should develop and implement KM strategies that attract expert software developers, capitalize on trust and social relationships, and build IT-based KM systems in order to enable knowledge acquisition and transfer.

The Lifecycle of a Knowledge Management System for Organizational Learning

This chapter describes the development and operation of a knowledge system to support learning of organizational knowledge at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a US national research laboratory whose mission is planetary exploration and to do what no one has done before. JPL 101 is a Web-accessible database of general organizational knowledge captured in a series of quizzes. The heart of JPL 101 is the content that is encoded as questions and annotated answers with connections to related information and resources. This chapter describes the requirements generation process, implementation, and rollout of the JPL 101 system. Data collected over 19 weeks of operation were used to assess system performance with respect to design considerations, participation, effectiveness of communication mechanisms, and individual-based learning. Analysis of content three years after primary operations assessed the degree of knowledge obsolescence in the system. These results are discussed in the context of organizational learning research and implications for practice.

A Multi-Level Performance Framework for Knowledge Management

Knowledge management (KM) has gained increasing attention since the mid-1990s. A KM strategy involves consciously helping people share and put knowledge into action. However, before an organization can realize the promise of KM, a fundamental question needs to be asked: What performance goal(s) is the organization trying to achieve? In this chapter, we develop and offer a multi-level framework that provides a view of the performance environment surrounding organizational knowledge work. We illustrate the KM framework using two organizational case studies. Then, based on the KM framework and further insights drawn from our case studies, we offer a series of steps that may guide and assist organizations and practitioners as they undertake KM initiatives. We further demonstrate the applicability of these steps by examining KM initiatives within a global software development company. We conclude with a discussion of implications for organizational practice and directions for future research.

Linking Knowledge to Competitiveness

Knowledge management (KM) initiatives are undertaken in order to improve organizational performance. The goal of such improvement is to make an organization more competitive in delivering value to its customers, employers, and stakeholders. However, without a plan that links KM activities to organizational performance, the time, effort, and money devoted to a KM initiative may yield little benefit. Thus, understanding this linkage is crucial to competitiveness of knowledge-based organizations. This chapter uses the knowledge chain model as the theoretical base for an empirical study of the linkage between KM activities and approaches to competitiveness. It finds that every one of the nine knowledge chain activities can be performed in ways that improve organizational competitiveness in any of four ways: enhanced productivity, agility, innovation, and reputation. Aside from offering empirical support for the knowledge chain model, the primary finding of this research is that each knowledge chain activity deserves to be considered as a possible means for implementing each of these four approaches to improving organization performance.

Knowledge Management Gap

Knowledge increasingly is recognized to provide a foundation for creating core competences and competitive advantages for organizations, making effective knowledge management (KM) crucial and significant. Despite evolving perspectives and rigorous endeavors to embrace KM intentions in business agendas, it is found that organizations always cannot realize expected benefits and improve their performances. This study reports a case study of an organization in Hong Kong that shares the typical characteristics of other organizations with strong awareness and expectation of KM yet experienced failure of its program in two years. Our findings showed that KM activities carried out in the organization were fragmented and not supported by members. Based on this failure case, four lessons learned are identified for improving KM performance.

Eliciting Tacit Knowledge Using the Critical Decision Interview Method

Interest in the capture of tacit knowledge within organizations has risen in recent years. However, while the capture of explicit knowledge is relatively straightforward, methods for eliciting tacit knowledge are less well-developed. This chapter briefly overviews a number of strategies for eliciting tacit knowledge and then provides a detailed examination of one of these strategies: the critical decision interview approach. The critical decision interview method can assist expert respondents to articulate tacit knowledge by probing beyond their espoused theories about their actions to reveal their practice. Tacit knowledge then can be identified by contrasting respondents’ practices with theoretical prescriptions for best practice in the field. The application of the method in an investigation of risk management in IT projects is described, and the effectiveness of this method for surfacing tacit knowledge is discussed.

The Role of Context and Its Explication for Fostering Knowledge Transparency in Modern Organizations

In order for a company to be oriented consistently toward its customers and their processes, it needs to customize its intracorporate processes and systems. The solution seems to be customer process-oriented portals that integrate companies’ systems and provide transparent access to information objects stored in these systems. A key problem in this regard is finding relevant information objects in systems that not only are growing but also also are being disseminated. An additional challenge is making knowledge available at the right time and at the right place. A company’s competitive advantage is rooted in this knowledge advantage as well as in the capability to transform this superior knowledge into market-driven business processes. The research questions addressed in this chapter are how the value of information objects is affected by the context in which it is considered and how associated contexts can be uncovered for given situations. We introduce a continuum of context explication comprised of the relationships among data, information objects, knowledge, and their contexts according to their degree and ease of context explication. The extremes of the continuum, therefore, would be data with no context to explicate and knowledge with rich, person-specific context. We conclude that discovering implicit meanings and expressing those meanings explicitly increase information objects’ potential values. In addition, we evaluate the full-text search, attribute-based search, and topic maps as approaches for knowledge discovery through customer process-oriented portals as well as providing patterns that indicate when to apply which approach. Two small case studies are presented of knowledge discovery through such portals. We conclude with suggestions for future research, based on our final deductions with respect to the study.

Factors that Contribute to the Success of Knowledge Management Communities of Practice

A community of practice (CoP) is an organizational form that promotes sense making, knowledge management, and learning. It is important to understand how and why these communities form and grow over time. These questions are explored in a qualitative analysis of a knowledge management (KM) community of practice. This case study includes a description of how the organization formed, survived, grew, and matured over a five-year period (1999-2004). Several practices and structures related to CoP development are identified: operations, roles and responsibilities, communications, subgroup structures, use of information technologies, and other aspects of organizing. Using data from several sources (e.g., membership surveys, interviews with key informants, document analysis), four sets of critical success factors are identified: Individual factors, content factors, meeting factors, and organizational factors. These factors are arranged into a descriptive model of the function and structure of CoPs over the life cycle. This work also sheds light on how to set up and successfully grow a community of practice.

A Birds-Eye View of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is a fragmented field, whether of necessity or of design. In this chapter, we present and discuss data that maps out a number of the characteristics of the field. We then discuss trends that indicate how knowledge management is evolving into a discipline in its own right and present some thoughts on what the dominant characteristics of that discipline need to be.

Knowledge Management Information Technology User Acceptance

This chapter presents the results of a study investigating the applicability of Davis’ technology acceptance model (TAM) to user acceptance of a knowledge management system (KMS) in a modern organizational environment. The objective of the study was to expand empirical research of two important and complex research questions: (1) What are the important factors, conditions, and mechanisms that affect people’s acceptance and usage of collaborative and interdependent KMS in the modern organizational environment? and (2) How applicable is the TAM and the substantial body of information technology (IT) research around this model to user acceptance and usage of a KMS in a modern organizational environment in which collaboration, knowledge sharing, and role-based system usage is necessary in order for the organization to function competitively? The study provided preliminary evidence suggesting that previous TAM research may serve as a foundation for research of KMS user acceptance. Relationships among primary TAM constructs found in this study were in substantive agreement with those of previous research. These findings are relevant and significant because they suggest that the considerable body of previous TAM-related IT research may be applied usefully to the knowledge management (KM) domain in which interdependent social processes that require knowledge creation, storage and retrieval, transfer, and application are required for effective organizational functioning.