Exploring the Knowledge Management Index as a Performance Diagnostic Tool

The knowledge management index (KMI) has been proposed as a parsimonious and useful tool to help organizations gauge their knowledge management (KM) capabilities. This may be the first step in understanding the difference between what an organization is currently doing and what it needs to do in order to maintain and improve its performance level. At the macro level, the index enables organizations to compare themselves with each other. At the micro level, it calls attention to areas needing improvement in current and future KM initiatives. In either case, the KMI provides a robust indicator and basis for business decision-making and organizational support and development. This paper presents a holistic approach to KM that relates key knowledge management processes (KMP) and critical success factors (CSF) needed to successfully implement it. By juxtaposing these processes and success factors, we create Belardo’s matrix that will enable us to characterize an organization and estimate the KMI. At the macro level, we used realized KMI values and OP estimates to confirm the positive correlation between the KMI and OP. Additional findings include comparing the current and expected role of KM in organizations and discussion for marginal values of rows (CSF) and columns (KM Processes) of the proposed matrix.