Integrating knowledge management technologies in organizational business processes: getting real time enterprises to deliver real business performance

Abstract

Purpose -To provide executives and scholars with pragmatic understanding about integrating knowledge management strategy and technologies in business processes for successful performance. Design/methodology/approach -A comprehensive review of theory, research, and practices on knowledge management develops a framework that contrasts existing technology-push models with proposed strategy-pull models. The framework explains how the ''critical gaps'' between technology inputs, related knowledge processes, and business performance outcomes can be bridged for the two types of models. Illustrative case studies of real-time enterprise (RTE) business model designs for both successful and unsuccessful companies are used to provide real world understanding of the proposed framework.Findings -Suggests superiority of strategy-pull models made feasible by new ''plug-and-play'' information and communication technologies over the traditional technology-push models. Critical importance of strategic execution in guiding the design of enterprise knowledge processes as well as selection and implementation of related technologies is explained.Research limitations/implications -Given the limited number of cases, the framework is based on real world evidence about companies most popularized for real time technologies by some technology analysts. This limited sample helps understand the caveats in analysts' advice by highlighting the critical importance of strategic execution over selection of specific technologies. However, the framework needs to be tested with multiple enterprises to determine the contingencies that may be relevant to its application.Originality/value -The first comprehensive analysis relating knowledge management and its integration into enterprise business processes for achieving agility and adaptability often associated with the ''real time enterprise'' business models. It constitutes critical knowledge for organizations that must depend on information and communication technologies for increasing strategic agility and adaptability.

Knowledge management technology-in-practice: a social constructionist analysis of the introduction and use of knowledge management systems

“…The second wave of KMT research (Huysman and Wulf 2006) focused on the collective emergent nature of knowledge sharing (Brown and Duguid 2000). This later literature recognised that "socio-psychological" factors are important in determining KMT's success (Malhotra 2005) and focused on social networking technologies and Web2.0 (O'Reilly 2007) including taxonomies and the semantic web (Thompson and Walsham 2004;Venters and Ferneley 2009). Yet both these waves of research have taken little interest in the social construction of KMT (two exceptions are (Makoto, Wilensky et al 2007) and (Park and Hossain 2003) though these papers are not empirically grounded).…”

Understanding knowledge management software-organisation misalignments from an institutional perspective: A case study of a global IT-management consultancy firm

“…For instance, for large organisations, particularly global management consultancy firms, the ability to continuously push content "in context" is a must (Ezingeard et al, 2000). Given the recent unprecedented growth in volumes of data and information and the continuously evolving variety of technology architecture, a sense of (dynamically updated) business outcomes and an awareness of individual knowledge needs could help determine what information should be created and pushed to the appropriate users in a timely fashion (Malhotra, 2005;Ezingeard et al, 2000). Additionally organisation can opt for the structures that reflect the organisation's history and experience (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991), and management and user interests for certainty and stability (Oliver, 1991).…”

“…An increasing number, however, have not gained the expected benefits from the technology and even worse, faced critical failures (Malhotra, 2005). For example in 2002, businesses sank US$2.7 billion into new KM systems (Babcock, 2004).…”

“…Whilst KM software packages may be configured to meet a wide range of organisational requirements and even integrated with 'best practices', a poor record of implementation success (Malhotra, 2005) suggests that, in some instances, the misfit between the context of adoption environment and the context within which the software was developed may be significant. Put another way, the privileging of commodification here is problematic for the organisations.…”

Success criteria for systems led transformation

“…Overall, the company believes that this approach should reduce timeto-market timescales (in line with the 90-day delivery cycle to be discussed in the conclusion). This delivers not only real-time organisational performance (Malhotra, 2005;Lindorff, 2002;Lindquist, 2003), but also meets the demands of customers who are now demanding readily available and customised technology-based products and services (and their supporting processes), to be delivered in near real time (Levenburg and Klein, 2006).…”