Strategic Knowledge Management in Public Organizations

Abstract

New public management and the more recent concept of new public governance have become the dominant management doctrines in the public sector. Public organizations have become increasingly network-like units with various governance relations with actors from the public, business, and voluntary sectors. Their organization is based more on networks than on traditional hierarchies, accompanied by a transition from the command-and-control type of management to initiate-and-coordinate type of governance. Among the most critical factors in this transformation is knowledge, for most of what has happened has increased the overall demand to create and process knowledge, and to utilize it in the performance of governmental functions. The success of public organizations depends increasingly on how efficiently they utilize their knowledge assets and manage their knowledge processes in adjusting to local and contextual changes, as illustrated in Figure 1 (cf. Gupta, Sharma, & Hsu, 2004, p. 3; Skyrme, 1999, p. 34, Fletcher, 2003, pp. 82-83). This requires that special attention be paid to strategic knowledge management. In the early organization theories of public administration, knowledge was predominantly conceptualized within the internal administrative processes, thus to be conceived of as bureaucratic procedures, rationalization of work processes, identification of administrative functions, and selected aspects of formal decision making. New perspectives emerged after World War II in the form of strategic planning and new management doctrines. The lesson learned from strategic thinking is that we need information on the external environment and changes therein in order to be able to adapt to and create new opportunities from these changes (see Ansoff, 1979; Bryson, 1995). As the complexity in societal life and related organizational interdependency has increased due to globalization and other trends, new challenges of managing organization-environment interaction also emerged (cf. Skyrme, 1999, p. 3).