Kshiti D. Joshi

An investigation of factors that influence the management of knowledge in organizations

Modern organizations are increasingly seen as knowledge-based enterprises in which proactive knowledge management is important for competitiveness. This paper introduces a descriptive framework for understanding factors that influence the success of knowledge management (KM) initiatives in an organization. It identifies three main classes of influencing factors (managerial, resource, and environmental) and characterizes the individual factors in each class. A Delphi process was used to develop and assess the framework. The Delphi panel was comprised of 31 recognized researchers and practitioners in the KM field. The resultant framework can be used by researchers for KM issue and hypothesis generation, by practitioners for benchmarking KM practices, and by educators for helping organize the study of KM.

A collaborative approach to ontology design

Creating a general ontology characterizing the conduct of knowledge management.

Knowledge Management: A Threefold Framework

It is widely claimed by a number of business and academic gurus that in order for organizations to have a lasting competitive advantage they will have to be knowledge driven. If knowledge is viewed as a resource that is critical to an organizations survival and success in the global market, then like any other resource it demands good management. However, the bulk of organizations still have not approached knowledge management (KM) activity formally or deliberately. The cause for this inattention could be that most organizations are still struggling to comprehend the KM concept. To ease the struggle, the fundamental issue of identifying salient characteristics of KM phenomena needs to be addressed. This article helps address this need by introducing a threefold descriptive framework that identifies and characterizes the main elements of KM phenomena and their relationships. The first component provides a generic description of an organizations knowledge resources. A second component introduces elemental knowledge manipulation activities an organization performs in dealing with those resources. The third component identifies major influences that impact an organizations conduct of KM. Results of a survey to assess the framework are reported. They indicate general satisfaction with the framework.

A formal knowledge management ontology: Conduct, activities, resources, and influences

This article describes a collaboratively engineered general-purpose knowledge management (KM) ontology that can be used by practitioners, researchers, and educators. The ontology is formally characterized in terms of nearly one hundred definitions and axioms that evolved from a Delphi-like process involving a diverse panel of over 30 KM practitioners and researchers. The ontology identifies and relates knowledge manipulation activities that an entity (e.g., an organization) can perform to operate on knowledge resources. It introduces a taxonomy for these resources, which indicates classes of knowledge that may be stored, embedded, and/or represented in an entity. It recognizes factors that influence the conduct of KM both within and across KM episodes. The Delphi panelists judge the ontology favorably overall: its ability to unify KM concepts, its comprehensiveness, and utility. Moreover, various implications of the ontology for the KM field are examined as indicators of its utility for practitioners, educators, and researchers.

Changing the Competitive Landscape: Continuous Innovation Through IT-Enabled Knowledge Capabilities

We theoretically and empirically investigate the relationship between information technology (IT) and firm innovation. Invoking absorptive capacity (ACAP) theory, we introduce and develop the concepts of three types of IT-enabled knowledge capabilities. Firm innovation is examined through two observable innovation outcomes: patents, and new product and service introductions. These innovation outcomes are often labeled as competitive actions aggressively undertaken by firms to gain market share or to achieve profitability. We use secondary data about IT-enabled knowledge capabilities and innovation outcomes of 110 firms. Our data results provide strong support for our main assertion that knowledge capabilities that are enhanced through the use of IT contribute to firm innovation. The studys findings suggest that the three types of IT-enabled knowledge capabilities have differential effects on firm innovation. This study substantially contributes to the information systems (IS) research, methodology, and practice in multiple ways.

Description and analysis of existing knowledge management frameworks

There is a growing recognition in the business community about the importance of managing knowledge. Some organizations have taken initiatives to understand and manage this critical resource. Major organizations have appointed chief knowledge officers (CKOs) and chief learning officers to formally initiate and cultivate KM activities in their organizations. In spite of these initiatives, the bulk of organizations still have not approached knowledge management (KM) activity formally or deliberately. The cause for this lack of effective management of knowledge could be that most organizations are still struggling to comprehend the KM concept. The reason for this confusion and lack of clarity can be attributed to a gap between the emerging KM phenomena and the current lack of understanding about this phenomena by researchers and practitioners. To bridge the gap, the fundamental issue of identifying salient characteristics of KM phenomena needs to be addressed. This is a prerequisite for systematic research into the nature and possibilities of KM, as well as for easing the emergence of KM into practice. Researchers have proposed a variety of KM framework models and perspectives to help understand this emerging phenomenon. Each of them addresses certain KM elements. However, none of them appears to subsume all of the others. The major contribution of this paper is that it presents a summary and comparative analysis of these frameworks.

Knowledge Management Ontology

Knowledge-based organizations are hosts for multitudes of knowledge management episodes. Each episode is triggered by a knowledge need (or opportunity) and culminates with the satisfaction of that need (or its abandonment). Within an episode, one or more of the organization’s processors (human and/or computer-based) manipulate knowledge resources in various ways and subject to various influences in an effort to meet the need or take advantage of the opportunity. This chapter presents an extensive ontology of knowledge management. The ontology identifies and characterizes basic components of knowledge management episodes, the knowledge resources an organization uses in these episodes, a generic set of elemental knowledge manipulation activities that manifest within knowledge management episodes, and categories of influences on the conduct and outcomes of these episodes. This ontology was developed using conceptual synthesis and a collaborative methodology involving an international panel of researchers and practitioners in the knowledge management field. The ontology can serve as a common language for discourse about knowledge management. For researchers, it suggests issues that deserve investigation and concepts that must be considered in explorations of knowledge management episodes. For practitioners, the ontology provides a perspective on factors that need to be considered in the implementation of an organization’s knowledge management initiatives.

Process and reality in information systems benefit analysis

The identification of the potential benefits of a proposed information system project is a very challenging and important task. However, little research describes how this is actually carried out. The objective of this research was to answer the core question: how do organizations identify the expected benefits of proposed IS projects? To accomplish this objective, the authors studied 24 projects by interviewing 20 subjects from 13 organizations. Based on these interviews, a model of the benefit identification process was formulated showing it to be a set of loosely defined, overlapping, iterative activities. The study suggests that, despite great uncertainty about the potential benefits, proposers were compelled to use the benefit identification process to persuade the organization to be committed to the project. This effort to build commitment under great uncertainty may contribute to the overstatement or understatement of expected benefits. The study offers managers an understanding of the process and guidance for carrying it out. It also suggests that future researchers validate the model, use it to help identify best practices and test related hypotheses.

Synthesizing IT job skills identified in academic studies, practitioner publications and job ads

This research examines IT job skills across three genres of texts: scholarly articles, practitioner literature, and online job ads. The job skills are organized in three broad categories: technical, humanistic and business skills. Findings suggest that the online advertisements list a strong mix of skills in these three categories, while practitioner literature tends to focus heavily on technical skills. The most recent practitioner literature, however, notes that CIOs are increasingly demanding business acumen as well as technical skills. Project management, financial analysis, and communication skills are the most frequently cited business skills. The scholarly literature tends to lag behind in terms of specific technical skills, but reports the richest set of IT job skills across the three categories.

Knowledge transfer among face-to-face information systems development team members: examining the role of knowledge, source, and relational context

Knowledge transfer has been proclaimed as one of the most critical knowledge management activities in the current information age where organizations have to continually learn and continually innovate to remain competitive. Research in the area of knowledge transfer has been conducted in many settings and for various objectives. However, limited attention has been directed towards examining the role of knowledge transfer in information systems development projects (ISD). In this study we empirically examine the impact of source context, knowledge context, and relation context on the process of knowledge transfer among ISD face to face team members. Specifically, we test the impact of ISD team members capability, credibility, and extent of communication on the process of knowledge transfer. Our findings suggest that in face to face ISD teams, an individual is perceived to transfer a significant amount of knowledge to his/her team members if an individual extensively interacts with other team members and is perceived as reasonably credible. Interestingly, an individuals task related capability did not affect knowledge transfer.