8.

Moving to Strategies

KM strategies, that is, how to bring KM into an organization or

to create a KM organization from the start, have been addressed by
a number of authors. In particular, intellectual capital (IC) has been
recognized as a vital force in organization effectiveness. There has
been a significant effort to understand what intellectual capital is
and how it can be strategically managed to harness and leverage an
organization’s knowledge and learning capacity to improve its
long-term competitive advantage.
A wide variety of strategies are suggested by various authors,
with each strategy centering on a single or small group of factors.
For example, Henry Chesbrough and David Teece considered
innovation as the primary focus while Daniel Kim dealt with
individual and organizational learning, and Arthur Armstrong and
John Hagel addressed On-Line Communities while others
addressed culture as the payoff (Klein, 1998). Some authors offer
specific processes for managing intellectual capital, treating
intellectual capital as a stock to be acquired, audited, stored, and
applied (Brooking, 1996). This represents the IT perspective.
Conversely, some KM professionals consider this a very
narrow and misplaced approach—particularly in treating IC as an
asset—presumably owned by the corporation. This is not
surprising since historically there has been a breach between the
KM technologists, people who see knowledge as information to be
stored and moved around by technology (Borghoff & Pareschi,
1998; Defense Acquisition University, 2002; Ruggles, 1997; and
Tiwana, 2000), and those who believe that KM is about humans
and their ability to create, learn and apply knowledge, with IT
having a support role. The relationship of IT, IM and KM was
discussed in Chapter 6.
The implementation strategy for KM in the Department of the
Navy (DON) serves as a model for the growth of knowledge and
sharing across the Department (see Figure 3). For example, when
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exploring a new idea---whether within an individual or in an
organization as a whole---closed structured concepts are first
created. As these concepts germinate, some focused but limited
sharing of these concepts occurs. Over time, particularly if positive
feedback occurs during the limited sharing, there is increased
sharing and a deeper awareness and connectedness through sharing
occurs, i.e., a common understanding of the concept is shared
across a larger number of people. From this framework,
individuals and organizations participating in this sharing create
new concepts and from those concepts new innovations,
purposefully sharing them across and beyond the framework
leading to application of these ideas to everyday work. As
connectedness increases, there is also heightened awareness, or
consciousness, of the potential value of these concepts to a larger
audience, leading motivated individuals and organizations to

Figure 3: The growth of sharing and knowledge.

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advance these concepts even further, engendering the rise of social
responsibility.
The change strategy suggested here is holistic, and not
bounded by the organization. Indeed, it encourages interactions
across large relationship networks and sharing and learning across
organizational boundaries. The DON implementation strategy was
viewed in terms of orchestrating and implementing 12 specific
elements: creating a shared vision; building the business case;
demonstrating leadership commitment; facilitating a common
understanding; setting limits; sharing new ideas, words and
behaviors; identifying the strategic approach; developing the
infrastructure; measuring and incentivizing; providing tools;
promoting learning; and visioning an even greater future (Bennet
and Bennet, 2004; Porter, Bennet, Turner & Wennergren, 2002).

KM as a discipline
Several thought leaders in the KMTL Study see the field as
still seeking a set of principles, guidelines, theories, laws and so
forth by which one can operate. For example, Steve Weineke
states, “A common framework would allow the community of
knowledge practitioners to appreciate the complexity of KM. If
constructed using ontological techniques, we would all be able to
see and understand the depth and breadth of disciplines, the
relationships between each discipline, and any interdependencies.
The framework becomes the taxonomy or the ontology to enable
sharing the knowledge of knowledge.”
Several thought leaders see this diversity of thought as a
benefit in terms of the ability to use any of a dozen acceptable
definitions dependent upon the specific focus of work and the
comfort level of clients. For example, Ramon Barquin states that,
“The ability for KM to be accepted by organizations is called out
in terms of its nebulous and loose nature, specifically, its lack of
focus and the difficulty in answering hard management questions
such as: What will it do? What’s the payoff? What’s the ROI?”

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 Yet another thought leader noted that the diversity of views on
what KM or even knowledge is and how it can be used in an
organization is probably healthy at this stage . . . it’s a bit too
early to standardize on one particular curriculum in the field. As he
points out, “There’s still room for a lot of creativity that emerges
from tensions that exist between different viewpoints.”
But many early KM
leaders searched for There’s still room for a lot of
creativity that emerges from
commonalities. Associations
tensions that exist between
began developing and different viewpoints.
delivering certification
courses. And for academic
leaders, a primary outcome of their passion for KM was to create a
discipline out of the field. By the year 2000, The George
Washington University had begun a degree-granting program with
a concentration in KM.
More than 25 doctoral students signed up that first year, with
several transferring from other doctoral program. Under the
leadership of Michael Stankosky, this group of students began the
task of creating a body of knowledge for what they call the
discipline of KM. As demonstrated in Table 2, they grouped all the
key elements of KM into four pillars, similar to “Newton grouping
his observations about gravity under the laws of motion”
(Stankosky & Baldanza, p. 269 in Barquin, Bennet, & Remez,
2001). Built across multiple disciplines, the four pillars are
leadership, organization, technology, and learning. The sub-
elements of these pillars, as can be seen in the 14 learning
objectives developed for the Federal sector that explore many of
the same themes, demonstrate the breadth of the field. In the sub-
elements (and in the 14 learning objectives introduced in Chapter
7) both technology and learning are closely linked to KM.
By 2004, there were more than 100 universities world-wide
that offered concentrations and/or degree programs in knowledge
management.

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Table 2: Explication of the four pillars of the GWU KM Model

Pillar Aspects Disciplines/Key

Elements
Leadership Strategic planning, vision sharing, Draws from
specific and general goals and operations research,
objectives, executive commitment, KM management science,
programs tied to metrics, formal KM psychology,
roles in existence, tangible rewards for philosophy, logic,
use of KM, special recognition for linguistics,
knowledge sharing and performance management
criteria for KM items information systems
and behavioral
profiling.
Organization Operating procedures for knowledge Draws from
sharing, business process reengineering psychology,
(BPR), management by objectives operations research,
(MBO), total quality management organization
(TQM), metric standards, development,
hierarchical/centralized/ philosophy and socio-
decentralized, matrix-type organization, linguistics.
open/sharing, closed/power based,
internal partnering versus competing
type culture
Technology Data warehousing, database Draws from computer
management, multimedia repositories, science, operations
groupware, decision support systems, research, electrical
corporate intranet, business modeling engineering,
systems, intelligent agents, neural math/statistics, logic
networks, etc. and management
information system.
Learning Tacit and explicit knowledge Draws from the
understood, sharing vision/team disciplines/key
learning, management support for elements of cognitive
continuous learning, knowledge psychology,
captured and distributed, KM values and organization
principles formally encouraged, virtual development,
teams/exchange forums in use, systems engineering,
communities of practice/shared results management
are active, innovation philosophy, personal
encouraged/recognized/rewarded mastery and
introspection.

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