Key Elements in an Effective Knowledge Management System: A Case Study Approach

Increasingly knowledge is acknowledged to be the most important resource in organisations. There is evidence in the literature that suggests that as organisations use knowledge effectively in their day-to-day operations they become more successful and therefore more valuable than their competitors who do not. Knowledge management is important for several reasons. First, knowledge management literature argues that knowledge has become a significant competitive tool (Rowley, 1999). Many acknowledge that in today’s knowledge-based economy, knowledge, rather than capital and labour, is the “only meaningful economic resource” (Drucker, 1993, Webber, 1993) or “their most valuable and strategic resource”(Zack, 1999). Second, managing knowledge is significantly different from managing other organisational assets. Stewart et al. (2000) argue that knowledge assets are different to physical assets with respect to three characteristics, namely, life, scope, and maintainability (Stewart et al., 2000). It follows that traditional physical asset management know-how may not be readily transferred to knowledge management. In addition, Sunassee & Sewry (2002) argue that the collective knowledge of an organisation’s employees is a critical resource to an organisation and managers need to know how to manage it. Third, knowledge management is important because today’s business environment is highly competitive. With an ever-changing customer needs and technology, organisations need to have the appropriate information and knowledge at the right time if they are going to make proper decision in a timely fashion (Sunassee and Sewry, 2002). However a review of knowledge management literature suggests that there are a number of issues where research is still at its infancy and which require further investigation. Some of these issues are highlighted in this section. Thus the aim of this paper is to identify the gaps in the literature and provide an agenda for further research. To begin, knowledge can be defined as ‘a symbolic representation built into basic primitives that can be manipulated by rules’ and is based on the meaning of data and information (Spiegler, 2000). Information that is acted