KMRP Highlight Papers Commentary
As Editor, I naturally feel that every paper we publish in KMRP is "special" in its way, but we have selected this set of papers to give a representative sample of the best of our output in the years 2006-2008.
The papers range from the general to the specific, from theoretical to practical (though never does the one exclude the other) and from focussing on people to focussing on technology (though again, never does the one exclude the other). Case study applications in these papers include Toyota, the US Air Force, Xerox, and organisations in the management consultancy, health care and engineering sectors.
Majoring on theory, we have the analysis of the theoretical foundations of knowledge management from 2006 by Richard Baskerville and Alina Dulipovici, based on the literature for the period 1995 to 2005. In view of the scope of this activity, we were naturally willing to allow the article to run to twice the normal length of KMRP papers. Their paper demonstrates the breadth of the theoretical foundations, and also shows a vibrant field with progress in many areas. We were especially interested in the connections between different theories shown in Table 6.
The paper by John Mingers from 2008 considers in detail the dimension of truth in people's conceptualisations of knowledge. He goes on to review many existing definitions of knowledge and related concepts (for example, listing 13 different senses for the verb "I know"), and concludes that there are four types or forms of knowledge: propositional, experiential, performative and epistemological.
David Schwartz's paper from 2007 is, by contrast, on a very different topic within knowledge management: how different ICT-based communication media may present (or remove) barriers to knowledge transfer. This is a good example of an agenda-setting paper.
A somewhat different type of paper sets out a more specific theoretical contribution and tests it. Two of these appear in our selection. One comes from Dianne Ford and Sandy Staples in 2006. This paper introduces a new construct, the perceived value of knowledge (PVK). One of their conclusions is that knowledge sharing is indeed influenced by both parties in the potential transaction. In their own words: "this research confirms that the recipient influences what an individual is willing to share, such that individuals are more willing to share with a close colleague or friend than they are to a distant colleague or to the entire organization through broadcast media".
The other is from 2007, by Daniel Holt, Summer Bartczak, Steven Clark and Martin Trent. They have developed a framework for organizational readiness for knowledge management, and an instrument with which to assess it. The framework draws on a combination of the KM and organizational change literatures. One conclusion is that KM readiness might best be assessed in two phases, first assessing the internal context and the readiness of the people in the organisation for KM in general, and then considering the specific characteristics of the proposed KM project or initiative.
Both of the previous two papers take a quantitative approach, but KMRP is equally open to case-study based and qualitative approaches, as the 2007 paper by Dimitris Apostolou, Andreas Abecker and Gregoris Mentzas demonstrates. They tackle the task of harmonising the codification and socialisation (also known as personalisation) strategic-level approaches to KM by means of an appropriate ICT infrastructure, emphasising the management perspective on this issue.
From the following year, 2008, Kazuo Ichijo and Florian Kohlbacher take a similar qualitative case-study approach, but concentrate on tacit knowledge, specifically the creation of local strategic marketing knowledge, much of which is (of course) tacit. Their cases concern developments at Toyota as part of its new strategy of 'learn local, act global' for international business development
Also from 2008, Eva Maaninen-Olsson, May Wismén and Sven A. Carlsson. present two case studies of knowledge integration in a work setting, looking in particular at boundary objects and boundary spanning activities between different work groups. One case is about a permanent work setting (health care), the other about a temporary (project) setting (technology and engineering).
KMRP also welcomes papers based on narrative, and the fascinating contribution by Andrew Cox from 2007 is an example of narrative analysis on two levels. The story of how photocopier engineers at Xerox shared their knowledge is one of the best-known examples in the history of knowledge management. Yet, in being cited and discussed so often, the story has actually taken on a life of its own, somewhat different from that in the originally cited article. Cox's article addresses this "story of the story" or "narrative of the narrative" and makes some telling points for KM as a whole, not least that there are now several conflicting variants of this "one" story.
Finally, KMRP also includes some position papers, to stimulate thinking and debate about the field of KM. for example, Daniel Andriessen's 2008 paper on metaphors and managing knowledge in organisations, based on his keynote address at the 8th European Conference on Knowledge Management in Barcelona in 2007, where it stirred up a great deal of interest and comment among conference delegates.
John S. Edwards
