Organizational characteristics as prescriptive factors of knowledge management initiatives

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The use of knowledge in organizations is largely a discretionary behavior that can be encouraged but not demanded. As such, the firm can only attempt to provide the right conditions for employees to endorse the role of knowledge workers. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the organization of the firm affects knowledge management.Design/methodology/approach -This research proposes a new framework showing the prescriptive role of organizational characteristics onto knowledge management (KM) initiatives. Based on this framework, data were generated from nine semi-structured interviews conducted in the American, British and Japanese offices of a major Japanese pharmaceutical company, using a Boolean approach and qualitative content analysis.Findings -Organizational characteristics, specifically -structure, membership, relationship, and strategy affect KM, namely -knowledge acquisition, storage, diffusion, and application respectively.Research limitations/implications -Even though the departments of each local office under study were matched in terms of activity, the size of their own domestic market made comparisons sometimes challenging.Practical implications -This research suggests that practitioners can increase the yield of KM when integrated upstream into the elementary business processes rather than when left voluntary.Originality/value -This paper uncovers a possible link between the firm's organizational characteristics and KM, and the new practical framework can be useful to both scholars and practitioners.

A study of knowledge management enablers across countries

“…In addition, organizational climate and organizational structure have been recognized as shaping KM (Chen & Huang, 2007). In fact, previous research has shown that the organization of the firm -such as its structure, membership, relationships, and strategy -constrain and influence the nature of KM (Magnier-Watanabe & Senoo, 2008). There has, however, been little research on how all these factors taken together affect KM, especially in the context of the global business market.…”

Perceiving Organisational Culture Influence on Knowledge Management Performance

“…KM is the essential speculation which grants to manage and share the knowledge within an organization, and to create new collective knowledge of the group [33]. In terms of most efficient method, KM can be defined as the process for acquiring, storing, diffusing and implementing the organizational boundaries between the tacit and explicit knowledge [19].…”

“…Besides, Knowledge management can be defined four dimensions as acquisition, storage, dissemination and implementation of corporate objectives [19]. Because KM is a concept in which an enterprise consciously gathers, organizes, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources [29].…”

The Application of a Knowledge Management Framework to Automotive Original Component Manufacturers

“…MagnierWatanabe and Senoo (2008) in their definition of KM place emphasis on the knowledge value chain (Magnier-Watanabe, 2011). Magnier-Watanabe and Senoo (2008) state that KM is the process of acquiring, storing, sharing, disseminating and applying knowledge both inside and outside the organization, with the goal of efficiently meeting corporate objectives. The effective use of KM helps organizations to improve the quality of their decision-making and thus, to reduce costs and increase efficiency and monitoring capabilities (Ferreira, Faria, Azevedo, & Marques, 2016;Heisig et al, 2016;Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008).…”