A framework integrating technical, social, and managerial aspects of effective knowledge management

Organizations must manage their knowledge resources effectively to perform well in competitive markets. However, with products, services, and processes becoming more complex, knowledge within organizations is highly diverse, dynamic, and distributed among different people and technical systems. Conventional knowledge management (KM) approaches are often not capable of addressing this complexity. To support organizations in handling the diversity, dynamics, and distribution of knowledge - and thus, enable them to better manage and exploit their knowledge resources - we present a socio-technical framework for organizational KM based on theories from information systems engineering, psychology, and sociology. The framework integrates the following technical, social, and managerial aspects of KM: (1) The technological formalization of knowledge (How does technology make existing knowledge available?); (2) the social organization of knowledge (How is knowledge socially distributed and linked across different people?); and (3) managerial practices concerning the exploration and exploitation of knowledge (How do organizational rules and structures support KM?). More specifically, we suggest application-oriented modeling techniques as a way of formalizing knowledge to make it available to both people and machines. Furthermore, we include transactive memory systems (i.e., knowledge about who knows what and communication between people to use that knowledge) in our framework to foster the identification and usage of relevant knowledge distributed among different individuals. Finally, because technological and transactive memory systems operate within an organizational context, the framework includes institutional reflexivity, a model for reflecting on and stabilizing changing requirements and practices in organizational KM. The framework was pre-evaluated by two independent expert groups consisting of managers, engineers, and researchers with backgrounds in innovation management and KM. We further suggest a tool for systematically diagnosing KM practices in organizations via questionnaire based on our theoretical framework. We conclude that technical, social, and managerial aspects must be addressed simultaneously to successfully organize and exploit existing knowledge.