Development of a General Knowledge Management Maturity Model

As investments in Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives grow, there is an increasing need for coherent and comprehensible principles and practices to guide KM implementation efforts. Academics and practitioners have proposed various KM Maturity Models (KMMM) to formally capture the KM development process by assessing the extent to which KM is explicitly defined, managed, controlled, and effective. However, the proliferation of definitions and assumptions and lack of clear description of assessment methods have made their selection and application difficult for practitioners and their study complex for researchers. Based on such motivations, this paper reviews, compares, assesses and integrates existing KMMMs to propose an General KMMM (G-KMMM), which focuses on assessing the maturity of people, process and technology aspects of KM development in organizations. An accompanying assessment tool is also developed to facilitate practical application. Avenues for further research and practice are discussed.