Tài liệu Defining Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies pdf

We argue that with this framework the resulting process-oriented knowledge management strategies address the integration of the resource-based view of an organization — which is the main

& Research Article

Defining Process-oriented Knowledge

Management Strategies

Ronald Maier* and Ulrich Remus

University of Regensburg, Germany

Along which basic lines could an organization which plans to invest in knowledge management proceed? What general initiatives can be suggested for knowledge management? First, an array of knowledge management goals and strategies is presented taken from theoretical and empirical studies which are then related to each other in the light of what we call a strategic intervention into an organization’s way of handling knowledge We then make the case for the integration of process orientation into a comprehensive multi-dimensional framework for knowledge management strategies Process-oriented knowledge management initiatives are designed to provide employees with task-related knowledge in the organiza-tion’s operative business processes We argue that with this framework the resulting process-oriented knowledge management strategies address the integration of the resource-based view of an organization — which is the main focus of knowledge management — with the market-oriented view — which is implicitly brought about by process orientation Copyright

# 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge Management (KM) and Organizational

Memory (OM) are concepts well known from

organizational science and learning theory Many

approaches have been developed which claim to

guide organizations to use their common or shared

memory in a more efficient way (for extensive

surveys of existing KM or OM approaches see

Lehner, 2000; Maier and Lehner, 2000) With the

advent of advanced database technologies, net and

communication technologies, especially the

so-called ‘Intranet’ or ‘Web’ technologies, as well as

dedicated knowledge management systems (KMS,

for a list of systems see Maier, 2002), sound

infor-mation and communication technologies exist

to support organizational processes of creating,

acquiring, organizing, distributing and applying

knowledge

There are already a large number of KM

activities implemented in organizations which often lack a strategic perspective KM seems to

‘absorb’ all kinds of theoretical approaches as well

as practical activities, measures and technologies without thorough consideration of their strategic

or business value We hypothesize that an organi-zation should follow a complex KM strategy as part of a comprehensive business strategy A KM strategy can be described using several dimensions derived from a theoretical and empirical survey of

KM activities, measures and technologies

Process orientation is a perspective widely accepted in organization science Recently, there have been a number of attempts to integrate KM and process orientation (cf Davenport et al., 1996; Allweyer, 1999; Eppler et al., 1999) However, until now there has been no link between the two concepts on the strategic level Organizations which have already implemented a oriented organizational design can use process-orientation as one of the strategic dimensions The goals of this paper are:

$ To lay out a framework that shows the strategic

*Correspondence to: Ronald Maier, Department of Business

Informatics III, University of Regensburg, D-93040 Regensburg,

Germany E-mail: ronald.maier@wiwi.uni-regensburg.de

DOI: 10.1002 / kpm.136

options an organization has with respect to KM.

The framework details the very general classes

of KM strategies suggested in the literature (see

e.g Hansen et al., 1999)

$ To address the integration of the resource-based

view of an organization incorporated into KM

initiatives with the market-oriented view In

order to accomplish this we make the case for

the integration of process orientation into a

strategic framework for KM

The paper is structured as follows The next

section describes the state of the art of KM

strategies on the basis of an empirical investigation

performed by one of the authors and a literature

review on theoretical and empirical studies Then

we will motivate process orientation as the starting

point for the formulation of a KM strategy The

derivation of a process-oriented knowledge

man-agement strategy from a general business strategy

is outlined The fourth section describes a set of

dimensions of KM strategies The fifth section

presents the complete framework with all

dimen-sions including the process-oriented dimension

and some hints for the application of the

frame-work The final section concludes the paper and

gives an outlook on a future research agenda

STATE OF THE ART OF KNOWLEDGE

MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES IN

PRACTICE

This section presents some empirical results

con-cerning KM goals and strategies as well as the

relationship to business strategy The results were

obtained in an empirical study which was

con-ducted by one of the authors (for a detailed

description of the study and its results see Maier,

2002) and in a literature survey on other empirical

studies the results of which are presented towards

the end of this section The empirical study

‘knowledge management systems ’99’ investigated

the state of the art of the use of KMS in the 500

largest German companies and the top 50 banking

and insurance companies which resulted in the

development of concepts, scenarios and reference

models for the management of KMS in

organiza-tions From a total of 504 questionnaires sent out,

73 organizations responded (response rate: 14.5)

In 22 of the 73 responding organizations (30.1%)

KM was well established To check this

percen-tage, we did a telephone survey of 243

organiza-tions originally questioned that showed that this

percentage is representative of the sample The

questionnaire (in German) together with related

material and publications can be downloaded from the URL: http://www-wi.uni-regensburg de/yoms

The list of KM goals which we used in the empirical study was derived from case studies documented in the literature (see e.g Davenport

et al., 1998) as well as empirical data found in studies on KM (e.g Earl and Scott, 1999; ILOI, 1997; Bullinger et al., 1997) The questionnaire contained, among others, the question: ‘How much does your organization aim at the following goals?’ In most of the organizations so far KM is

an internal activity that is focused (almost) exclu-sively on the organization-internal knowledge base With the exception of ‘improving innovation’ which can be seen as a very general goal those KM goals that are focused strongly by most if not all organizations primarily try to

(1) Improve the handling of existing knowledge in documents or in people’s heads: ‘improve trans-parency’ (17 organizations strongly aim at this goal), ‘improve access’ (14), ‘improve documentation’ (13) and ‘retention of knowl-edge’ (14), or to

(2) Improve the sharing of knowledge: ‘improve knowledge sharing’ (12), ‘improve commu-nication’ (13)

Twelve out of 18 organizations (=66.7%) aimed

at eight or more KM goals strongly at the same time Thus, it seems that KM initiatives are currently very broadly and vaguely defined pro-jects

Additionally, we asked ‘To what extent does your organization achieve the following goals?’ The rates of achievement of most of the KM goals were ranked on average between 3.71 and 4.63 (on a 7-point scale with 7 being the highest score) showing a medium level of achievement Thus, it seems that the KM efforts of the responding organizations, on average, still have some way to

go until the more advanced benefits can be harvested

Concerning the relationship of KM initiatives to business goals, the highest benefits are estimated

to be in the rather ‘soft’ areas like ‘improve custo-mer satisfaction’, ‘improve speed of innovation’ whereas the quantitative criteria do not achieve equally high estimates (e.g ‘reduce costs’,

‘improve growth of organization’) It is interesting

to note that two of the three highest-ranked goals (‘improve customer satisfaction’, ‘improve produc-tivity’) are also typical business process reengi-neering goals

Additionally, we asked how many business

processes the organizations targeted with their KM

initiatives It is not surprising that only 13

respondents (65% of those responding to this

question) answered this question whereas 7

respondents indicated that they did not know

how many business processes were targeted In

the remaining 53 cases the organizational design of

the KM initiative was not (yet) detailed enough to

cover this aspect Of the 13 respondents 9 did not

focus on business processes, but supported all

business processes throughout the organization

The other 4 respondents focused on 2, 3, 4 and 10

business processes (1 case per answer) As

hypothesized, it seems that process orientation is

not yet focused in most of the KM activities of

German organizations despite the fact that most

organizations had already undergone business

process management programs in the past

There are also a number of authors who

pragmatically suggest a series of KM instruments,

activities or efforts as ‘strategies’ They neither

detail the link to business strategies nor do they

distinguish between strategies, on the one hand,

and instruments, activities or efforts to implement

strategies, on the other Most of these authors base

their findings on empirical studies investigating

KM initiatives in organizations Examples are (see

Ruggles, 1998, p.85f; Hansen et al., 1999, p.278f;

APQC, 1996, pp.18ff):

(1) Map sources of internal expertise: the issue is to

make knowledge assets visible, to increase

managers’ attention; the focus is on the

personal side of the knowledge in an

organi-zation, e.g expert directories, skill databases,

yellow pages

(2) Establish new knowledge roles: create a separate

organizational unit, create positions or roles

responsible for knowledge-related tasks, such

as knowledge broker or knowledge engineer,

assign personal responsibility for knowledge

(3) Create a (virtual) work environment which

enables the sharing of tacit knowledge: the issue

is to create virtual workspaces, networks of

knowledge workers which provide an

alter-native environment to the co-located

work-space, thus enabling the sharing of tacit

knowledge

(4) Support knowledge flows in an organization:

knowledge seekers and knowledge providers

should be connected using systems and tools

which provide for a balancing of pull and

push of knowledge KMS are needed which

adapt to usage and communication patterns

of knowledge seekers and providers

(5) Knowledge management as a business strategy:

KM is either integrated within the overall busin-ess strategy or treated as a separate businbusin-ess strategy in parallel with other strategies (6) Customer-focused knowledge: the aim of this strategy is to capture knowledge about cus-tomers, their needs, preferences, businesses and their reactions to actions taken by the organization etc

(7) Intellectual asset management strategy: the aim

of this strategy is the enterprise-level man-agement of patents, technologies, operational and management practices, customer rela-tions, organizational arrangements, and other knowledge assets

(8) Innovation and knowledge creation: research and development is focused to enhance innova-tion and the creainnova-tion of new knowledge The state of the art of KM strategies in practice can be described as follows There are already a large number of initiatives in organizations under way They combine very different approaches and singular activities which are supposed to deliver business value by improving the way an organiza-tion handles knowledge KM in practice seems to

be an effort that comprises all kinds of different activities, measures and technologies Unfortu-nately, it seems that organizations do not pay much attention to the strategic value of their initiatives or the link between KM activities and the business strategy or competitive advantages Thus, it is unclear how a resulting KM strategy can

be characterized and detailed

PROCESS-ORIENTATION FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

We will first briefly review the advantages of pro-cess orientation before we address the resource-based view and the market-oriented view of an organization, and finally discuss a process-oriented KM strategy

Advantages of process orientation The process-oriented view offers the following advantages for a KM initiative:

$ Value chain orientation: The process-oriented view combines the task-oriented and the knowledge-oriented viewpoint into a value chain-knowledge-oriented perspective (see explanations above) Knowl-edge that contributes to value-creating activi-ties can successfully be linked to business

processes Thus, knowledge can be offered to

an employee in a much more targeted way At

the same time, information overload can be

avoided, since only information relevant to the

value-creating activity is filtered and made

available (see Schreiber et al., 1999, p.72; Bach

et al., 1999, p.27)

$ Context relevance: Processes can provide part of

the context that is important for the

interpreta-tion and construction of process-relevant

knowledge That includes knowledge about

processes that is to be stored together with

knowledge derived from processes during their

operation

$ Widely accepted management methods: There are at

least ten years of experience in reengineering

business processes The adaptation of activities

within business process reengineering (BPR) for

the specific needs of reengineering

knowledge-intensive business processes (cf Davenport

et al., 1996) can be a promising area This

includes adapted process models, expanded

modeling activities (cf Remus and Lehner,

2000), reference models and tools (cf Allweyer,

1999) Expertise in BPR is readily available for

organizations

$ Improvement in handling of knowledge: Next to the

advantages resulting from an organization’s

analysis of its own business processes, such as

clarifying tasks and promoting an integrative

view, process-orientation can lead to a more

targeted improvement in the handling of

knowl-edge in terms of Knowlknowl-edge Process Redesign

(KPR) (see Davenport et al., 1996; Allweyer,

1999; Eppler et al., 1999)

$ Process benchmarking: The comparison of very

successful knowledge-intensive business

pro-cesses can be a good starting point for activities

in the field of KPR Since these weakly

struc-tured processes are often difficult to describe,

efforts in this field seem to be quite reasonable

An example is the success of the MIT process

handbook which also includes many typical

knowledge-intensive business processes (see

Malone et al 1999)

$ Support for process-oriented knowledge

manage-ment: Knowledge processes that handle the

flow of information between processes can

be implemented and established

organization-wide (e.g by creating the position ‘process

owner’) Knowledge processes can manage

knowledge as service processes for the

opera-tive business processes The implementation of

process management which also comprises the

idea of continuous process improvement (CPI)

can integrate the life cycle models of KM

$ Process controlling: A problem in KM is trans-parency about costs and benefits Pragmatic approaches to knowledge controlling could profit from a process-oriented approach Some approaches within the field of active based costing (Scheer 1998, pp.66ff) seem to be appro-priate and have to be adapted to knowledge-intensive processes as well

$ Designing and introducing KMS: The analysis of business processes can be a good starting point

to design and introduce KMS (see Nissen et al.,

2000, p.40; cf CommonKADS methodology for knowledge engineering and management, Schreiber et al., 1999) Information derived from processes can also be used to specify KMS more precisely (e.g process-oriented navigation structure, process-oriented knowledge maps and knowledge structure diagrams)

Knowledge management and business strategy The so-called market-based view was most pro-minently developed and pushed by the frame-works proposed by Porter (e.g the well-known five-forces model, Porter, 1980, p.4; the value chain, Porter, 1985, pp.36ff; the diamond, Porter,

1990, p.71f) These frameworks help to analyze the organization’s environment, namely the attractive-ness of industries and competitive positions (for the following see Porter, 1980, pp.3ff, 1985) In its extreme form, the market-based view almost exclusively pays attention to the competitive posi-tion and it is mostly only in the implementaposi-tion phase that the organizational resources are con-sidered The main focus of a strategy in the market-based view is to select an attractive industry and to position an organization attrac-tively within this industry through one of the two generic strategies cost-leadership or differentia-tion Along with the two possibilities of industry-wide activities versus a concentration on a specific niche within the industry, a resulting set of four generic strategies is proposed

However, criticism of the one-sided orienta-tion of the market-based view resulted in the development of the resource-based view (see Wernerfelt, 1984; Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991; Leonard-Barton, 1992) The central idea of the resource-based view is that an organization’s success is determined by the existence of organization-specific unique resour-ces As opposed to the market-based view, compe-titive advantages thus are not due to a superior positioning of an organization in an industry, but

to superior quality of resources or a superior use

of the organizational resources The postulated

heterogeneity of resources in different

organiza-tions enables sustained competitive advantages and

is determined by the individual historical

devel-opments of the organization Examples are the

development of specific material and immaterial

resources, the creation of complex organizational

routines which in turn causes specific historical

trajectories and lead to unique idiosyncratic

com-binations of resources in organizations (see

Barney, 1991, pp.103ff)

A framework for a knowledge management

strategy can be based on the traditional SWOT

analysis in which strategy is seen as balancing the

external environment of an organization (its

Opportunities and Threats) with its internal

cap-abilities (Strengths, Weaknesses, see Zack, 1999b,

p.126) The external environment can be described

by Porter’s well-known five forces model (see

Porter, 1980) which represents a market-oriented

strategy The internal capabilities are studied

under the lens of the resource-based view of an

organization Knowledge is commonly believed to

be one of the most important, if not the most

important strategic resource of an organization

Consequently, there is broad agreement in the

management literature that KM has to be solidly

linked to business strategy and ultimately to the

creation of economic value and competitive

advan-tage in order to be a sustained effort (see e.g Earl

and Scott, 1999, p.36f; Zack, 1999b, p.142)

How-ever, this link has not been widely implemented in

practice (see Zack, 1999b, p.126 and the empirical

studies cited there) This is due to the lack of

strategic models to link KM efforts (in the sense

of knowledge-oriented processes, organizational

structures and instruments, culture-related

activi-ties and the implementation of technologies) and

business strategy

KM activities are performed with the help of

knowledge processes like knowledge

identifica-tion, knowledge organization and knowledge

dis-tribution (see Probst and Raub, 1998, p.51) Besides

the advantages of the resource-based view for a

business strategy and also for a KM strategy there

is the danger that an organization focuses (almost)

exclusively on its internal resources The

respec-tive shortcomings are well described under the

concept of core rigidity (see Raub and Romhardt,

1998, cit Barton, 1992) Core rigidity means that an

organization does not consider market-oriented

factors, like new business fields, customer groups,

new competitors and therefore might loose

com-petitiveness

On the other hand, it is also not advisable that

organizations exclusively consider market-oriented

factors in their strategy A typical example would

be a diversification into industries with which the organization is not familiar From a resource-based view an exclusive market-oriented strategy can result in a fragmentation and erosion of the organizational knowledge base This is due to the danger that competencies needed for the new strategic business unit cannot be integrated with the existing organizational knowledge base because often there is a lack of competencies (or simply time!) to evolve, manage and integrate these separate knowledge bases

Figure 1 gives a more detailed picture of the relationships between knowledge management and a simplified version of the strategic manage-ment process (Schendel and Hofer, 1979, 15) The first step of this process is the identification of the key resources related to knowledge management

At the same time the competitive environment has

to be analyzed in order to provide a focus for the identification of the resources Resources are only meaningful and valuable, because they allow organi-zations to perform activities that create advan-tages in particular markets (see Porter, 1991, p.108) Knowledge management supports the identification, development and acquisition of knowledge-related resources Zack’s concept of knowledge gap can be found on this level

The next step is the selection of strategically relevant resources in order to provide organiza-tional competencies or capabilities Resources are only indirectly linked with the capabilities that the firm can generate A competency or capability consists of an integrated, linked and networked set

of resources, a ‘team of resources’ (Grant, 1991, p.120) Knowledge management aims at lever-aging resources, e.g by concentrating them upon

a few clearly defined goals, accumulating resour-ces through mining experience and acresour-cessing other firms’ resources, complementing resources, con-serving them to use resources for different pro-ducts and markets and recovering resources by increasing the speed of the product development cycle time (see Grant, 1998, p.126)

Figure 1 also shows a circle model visualizing the four dimensions of capabilities: skills and the organizational knowledge base, technical systems, managerial systems and the values and norms associated with organizational knowledge (see Leonard-Barton, 1992, p.113f) Capabilities can be compared to the competition Capabilities and com-petencies are considered as core if they differ-entiate a company strategically The resulting capability differentials give rise to competitive advantages which can be realized by applying the competencies in selected strategic business fields

Knowledge management supports the integration

of resources into capabilities, the valuation of

capability differentials and drives the dynamics

of the organizational learning cycle as sustained

capability differentials require continuos

improve-ment of the competencies

Instead of following these extreme positions,

we suggest to balance market- and

resource-orientation Therefore, an organization should

organize its internal resources according to a

resource-based strategy by managing

knowledge-based resources with the help of KM activities

Simultaneously, it should choose competitive

busi-ness fields, customer groups, products and

ser-vices according to a market-based strategy

The definition of corporate goals and corporate

analysis identifies, on the one hand, strategic

business units (SBU) and, on the other hand, fields

of core competencies These tasks are at first

independent of the organizational design which

represents the next step of the strategic

manage-ment process Besides designing the organizational

structure it is necessary to design the

correspond-ing tasks and workflows This can be done by

defining business processes

Business processes can be organized in terms of

strategic business units or fields of core competencies That means that processes can be designed guided

by market- as well as resource-oriented considera-tions

The market-oriented corporate strategy is strongly oriented towards customers and markets which is all the more emphasized by the concept

of process-orientation The latter means the design

of customer-related business processes In this case the design of business processes is guided by delivering value to the customer who triggers and receives the output of the value chain (=‘end-to-end view’, see Davenport et al., 1996) and does not focus on organizational core competencies

With respect to the resource-based corporate strategy which is at first oriented towards internal factors process orientation can provide a useful means to avoid the danger of ‘core rigidity’ This is due to the fact that the implementation of business processes inherently considers market-oriented factors because of its ‘end-to-end view’ from customer to customer

The following generic types of core competen-cies can be used to design core and service processes in the resource-based strategy (see Scholz and Vrohlings, 1994, p.102)

Figure 1 Relationship between knowledge management and competitive advantage

$ Competence of creation: analysis of markets,

definition of products and services

$ Competence of realization: realization of services,

procurement, production, offer add-on services

$ Competence of transaction: develop markets,

logistics, order fulfillment, maintenance

These core competencies are directly noticed by

customers and are organized by customer-oriented

core processes, in other words the business

processes serve to transform core competencies

into process outputs, i.e products and services for

the customers

If we compare both approaches to design

business processes it might well be that the two

resulting sets of business processes are equal

independent of the orientation of the strategy that

guided the design process

A typical example is the order fulfillment

pro-cess which can be derived directly when customer

needs are considered or the generic competence of

transaction as described above is bundled in

the order fulfillment process Clearly,

resource-orientation and market-resource-orientation are related as

business processes require core competencies to

deliver marketable products and services

Process-oriented knowledge management

strategy

So far we have discussed KM strategies and

corporate strategies in an isolated way We then

proposed to integrate resource-based and

market-oriented factors when designing and

implement-ing business processes In this section we will

show in detail how to integrate the

resource-based and the market-oriented view into what we

call a process-oriented knowledge management

strategy

Figure 2 presents a framework that integrates

market-orientation and resource-orientation with

the help of a process-oriented KM strategy

Market-oriented factors are considered in the

definition of strategic business units Simultaneously

organizational core competencies are defined A

process-oriented KM strategy should be able to

balance both orientations, by considering the

organization’s core competencies when defining

strategic business units Additionally, a

process-oriented KM strategy has to select strategic business

units which are needed for the development of

(complementary) core competencies These tasks

are guided by strategic knowledge assets which are

developed and managed by KM activities A

strategic knowledge asset is a concept that views

core competencies in the light of their application

for products and services, in Porter’s terms systems

of activities (Porter, 1996) that make a difference visible for the customers (external perspective) On the other hand, strategic knowledge assets help to orient the development and management of core competencies (internal perspective)

Strategic knowledge assets guide the design of business processes As discussed above, the design

of business processes can be guided by SBUs or by core competencies Strategic knowledge assets bridge the gap between SBU’s and core competen-cies In the following we will discuss two scenarios from which organizations can start to formulate a process-oriented KM strategy The two scenarios represent the two extreme positions of an exclu-sive market oriented or resource-oriented strategy

as the starting point for the implementation of a process-oriented KM strategy

Scenario 1: If an organization so far has applied

an exclusive market-oriented strategy, then external determinants such as customers’ demands, the organization’s market position and competitors’ process designs are explicitly considered in the process design One of the most important factors towards customer orientation is the consideration

of individual requirements and is implemented, for example, by the management of variants and complexity and in the idea of triage to organize three variants of a process that differ in the amount of complexity encountered in different markets, situations or inputs (Hammer and Champy, 1993, p.55f)

In this scenario, a process-oriented KM strategy will guide the process design on the organizational level and consider the organization’s resources in the bundling of core competencies in separate knowledge-intensive business processes and/or knowledge processes in the sense of service pro-cesses for the organization’s business propro-cesses These newly designed processes are managed, for example, by centers of competence (see To¨pfer, 1997) or specific KM roles, such as knowledge brokers, subject matter specialists, best-practice groups or communities-of-interest

Scenario 2: If an organization has exclusively applied a resource-based strategy, then business processes are derived from core competencies Thus, knowledge processes that manage core competencies supposedly are already defined To avoid core rigidity we have to additionally consider market-oriented factors

In this scenario, a process-oriented knowledge management strategy and the definition of strate-gic knowledge assets have to consider these external factors in the definition of knowledge-intensive business processes An example is the

bundling of competencies in business processes

that make a visible difference to the organization’s

customers This can be institutionalized in

so-called centers of excellence visible to the customers

or in specific KM roles, such as boundary spanners

and cross-organizational expert networks and

communities-of-interest

To sum up, the role of a process-oriented

knowledge management strategy is to guide the

design of business and knowledge processes that avoid the problems of core rigidity in the case of resource-orientation and strategic ‘over-stretching’

of competencies in the case of market-orientation The strategic knowledge asset was introduced as the concept connecting strategic business units and core competencies and thus relates the external and internal perspective resulting in core compe-tencies visible to the customers

Figure 2 Process-oriented KM integrates the resource-based view and the market-oriented view of an organization

A process-oriented knowledge management

strategy

The relevance of an integrated view on process

orientation and KM is underlined by strong

dependencies between these two approaches on

the operational level Knowledge is created within

the operative business processes and shared with

other business processes

On the other hand, knowledge also plays a crucial

role when an organization decides to implement the

concept of process management The development

and distribution of process knowledge (see below)

in improvement or change processes is a key factor

for successful continuous process improvement

which contributes to the adaptation of an

organiza-tion to environmental change

In a study conducted by the Fraunhofer institute

in Berlin the German Top 1000 and European Top

200 companies were questioned about what KM

activities they applied in connection with business

processes (see Mertins et al., 2001, pp.97–123) One

interesting result is the close relationship between

core competencies and the starting point of KM

initiatives with respect to the number of business

processes Organizations were asked how many

business processes contributed to their core

com-petencies More than two thirds of the companies

said that between two and five business processes

contributed to their core competencies Similarly,

more than half of the companies started their KM

initiative in two or three business processes, 20%

even focused on one single business process If we

assume that the duration of KM projects increases

with the number of business processes involved

we can hypothesize that companies try to gain

‘quick wins’ in knowledge management and

there-fore avoid large and complex KM projects Not

surprisingly, the companies targeted their KM

initiatives initially on those business processes

which in their view also contributed to their core

competencies (see Mertins et al., 2001, p.101)

These results once again show the close

relation-ship between core competencies, core business

processes and KM activities in practice

Certainly, the application of process orientation

in general and a process-oriented KM strategy in

particular has limits The traditional perspective

which considers business processes is the model of

value chains by Porter (1985) The organization is

analyzed in terms of value creating activities,

which basically rely on the underlying business

processes However, expanded value configuration

models like the value shop and the value network

are suitable instruments to analyze and

des-cribe new alternative value creation technologies,

especially for knowledge-intensive business pro-cesses (cf Stabell and Fjeldstad, 1998, p.415) A central point of all these approaches is the orientation towards value creation Generally, a knowledge management strategy which uses pro-cess orientation as the primary perspective to analyze an organization is strongly dependent on the following requirements and conditions:

$ The core business of the organization which is about to design a knowledge management stra-tegy is viewed and managed using a process-oriented perspective Business processes are modeled and described and therefore visible for the employees

$ Process-oriented management activities have already been carried out (e.g business process reengineering, business process improvement, process management) Process-orientation in general and these activities in particular are well known and accepted by the employees Some weak spots in handling knowledge have been identified There are some measures and indicators of the process which are collected regularly (e.g time, cost, quality)

Process orientation can and should be seen as an additional dimension within a bundle of possible dimensions describing a complex KM strategy, especially for process-oriented organizations The framework presented in the next section is intended to provide the integrating basis for the description of a process-oriented KM strategy

DIMENSIONS OF PROCESS-ORIENTED KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

STRATEGIES

In the following a number of strategic options to the implementation of KM activities are discussed These options make up a framework comprising six dimensions which can be used to classify KM strategies

Topics/content

KM strategies can be distinguished according to the knowledge content, the type of knowledge that

is focused In order to position an organization against its competitors, the following three cate-gories of knowledge can be distinguished per area

of competency, or per strategic business unit, division, product line, function or market position (see Zack, 1999b, p.133f):

$ Core knowledge: the minimum knowledge com-monly held by members of an industry; also

considered the basic industry knowledge

bar-rier to entry

$ Advanced knowledge: enables an organization to

be competitively viable; competitors may

gen-erally hold about the same level, scope or

quality of knowledge, but knowledge

differen-tiation can take place with competitors holding

specific knowledge

$ Innovative knowledge: enables an organization to

lead its industry and to significantly

differ-entiate itself from its competitors

Along these lines a large number of

‘dimen-sions’ can be distinguished which describe various

types of knowledge These dimensions are outlined

by pairs (e.g tacit versus explicit or narrative

versus abstract knowledge, see Table 1 below)

which can be used to describe knowledge

cesses or process steps These knowledge

pro-cesses are transformations of knowledge of one

type into knowledge of the opposite type of one

and the same pair In our framework a number of

knowledge dimensions are distinguished with

respect to the corresponding main ‘‘area of

intervention’’ – organization, systems, content etc

(see e.g Romhardt, 1997, pp.10ff, Eppler et al.,

1999; Zack, 1999, pp.46)

Target group

KM strategies can also be classified according to

the main target group focused:

$ Employee rank: the strategies differ in which

level of employees is considered as the primary

focus of KM activities: employee – manager –

executive

$ Employee life cycle: one could imagine special

knowledge-related activities, e.g starter

pack-ages for KMS, communities specially designed

for newly recruited employees, time reserved

for employees facing retirement to document

lessons learned or to act as a mentor, or for

employees preparing for or immediately after

completing a step in their career

$ Employee role: the strategies differ in what roles

of employees are focused, e.g role-specific

packages for KMS, communities linking

employees who are on about the same career

track, like high potentials, functional specialists,

internationals etc

$ Organizational scope: at least four scopes can be

distinguished (the corresponding technologies

are given in parentheses): core group (work

space) — organization (intranet) —

organiza-tion and partners (extranet, virtual private

network) — unlimited (Internet-communities)

Instruments and technology Instruments for knowledge management influence all levels of intervention, i.e the underlying corporate culture, the organizational structure, roles, processes and the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) There are lots

of different types of instruments involved in KM-initiatives, as, for example, yellow pages and skills directories, expert networks, communities, lessons learned, best practices, content management (see Maier, 2002)

As opposed to the content-oriented approach described above, several authors propose a classi-fication of technologies supporting KM Table 1 contains a list of KMS classes For each of the classes there are a number of application systems

or tools respectively which are already available

on the market (the list was established by a theoretical and empirical assessment of currently available KMS done by one of the authors, see Maier, 2002, see also Ruggles, 1998, pp.82ff):

$ Knowledge repositories (knowledge element manage-ment systems; knowledge managemanage-ment suites): Hyperwave Information Server and Portal, OpenText Livelink, SAP Knowledge Ware-house;

$ Knowledge discovery and mapping: e.g IBM Intelligent Miner USU Knowledge Miner Data-prise DataBroker;

$ Knowledge transfer and e-learning: e.g Hyper-wave E-Learning Suite, Lotus Learning Space;

$ Meta-search systems: InQuery (Open Text), K2 Enterprise (Verity);

$ Collaboration: e.g., Lotus Notes;

$ Visualization and navigation systems: e.g Brain, InXight Correlate K-Map;

$ Community builder: Community Engine (web-fair);

$ Push-oriented systems: Push Application Server (Backweb)

These KMS are operated on the basis of an (organization-wide) information and communica-tion infrastructure, in most cases an Intranet-platform, on which information sharing between (virtual) teams both within the organization and across organizational boundaries with allies, sup-pliers and customers is possible The KM instru-ments and systems described above can be classified as follows (see Zack, 1999a, p.50):

$ Integrative knowledge management instruments and systems focus knowledge as an object as the primary medium for knowledge exchange and comprise the following KMS: