Knowledge Management Most Cited Articles 10, 11 and 12 Presented by: Lana Abu-Shaheen Undergraduate Senior in MIS and OM November 8, 2005

Contents Organizational Memory: Review for Concepts and Recommendations for Management E. Stein (1995) Research interests focus on the role of knowledge and expertise in business organizations. It is important for “lower down” people to get connected and interrelate the knowledge each one has. An improved organizational memory can benefit organization in several ways

Contents Exploring Internal Stickiness: Impediments to the Transfer of Best Practice Within the Firm Gabriel Szulanski (1996) Research interests focus on strategic management, with a specific focus on the management of knowledge assets and the making of strategy Barriers are knowledge related not motivation related Results contrast to conventional wisdom

Contents The Firm as a Distributed Knowledge System: A constructionist Approach Haridimos Tsoukas (1996) Resources are created by human interface Knowledge is dispersed through individual communication

Cross-cutting Themes Concepts Paper 1 (Szulanski, 1996) Paper 2 (Stein, 1995) Paper 3 (Tsoukas, 1996) Ways to deter transfer of knowledge Internal stickiness - Organization does not know how to learn - lack of absorptive capacity - lack of motivation - arduous relationships Non-functioning Organizational memory 1. Not fully utilizing resources 2. Uneven distribution of knowledge 3. Not enough interaction because of management Resources The people, their interaction and the communication channel People, interaction, past knowledge repository People and their departmental interactions

Cross-cutting Themes Throw backs to Nonaka’s philosophies Knowledge creation occurs at any level in the organization Tacit and explicit knowledge Make knowledge available for testing and use in the whole organization Throw backs to Garvin’s philosophies Importance of having a learning organization Communication across functional departmental boundaries important to stimulate diffusion of knowledge among all aspects of organization

Additional Information DECOR System (2004) Delivery of Context-sensitive Organizational Knowledge Documented knowledge on different sources of media Links and relationships not represented Ontology based system that makes looking up information easy for user Approach: Identify knowledge-intensive processes Process analysis Construct domain ontology Analyze task specific knowledge needs Deal with weak workflow structures

Basic Structure: DECOR philosophy

References The DECOR Toolbox for Workflow embedded Organizational Memory Access Abecker A., Bernardi A., Ntioudis Spyridon, Mentzas G.,Heretrich R., Houy C., Muller S., Legal M. http://project.know-net.org/Papers/C45-ICEIS-01.pdf Dr. Szulanski http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/profiles/gszulanski/ http://www.sagepub.com/book.aspx?pid=6731 3. Dr. Tsoukas http://www.alba.edu.gr/faculty/faculty/resident/index.asp?prof_id=20 4. Dr. Stein http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/e/w/ews3/