Executives agree with Doyle McCarthy, who sees society as a product of knowledge. [1] Defining culture as various forms of knowledge and symbols that make up an organization’s culture. However, knowledge is a by-product of culture and knowledge’s role in guiding and facilitating people’s action is key to executive decision-making.

Knowledge also creates values, thereby fulfilling the strategic functions of “producing and guiding social action, of integrating social organizations, of protecting the identity of individuals and groups, of legitimatizing both actions and authorities, and of serving as an ideology for individuals, groups, classes, and entire nations”. [2] In addition, Thomas Beckman explains that knowledge management is “the formalization of and access to experience, knowledge and expertise that create new capabilities, enable superior performance, encourages innovation and enhances customer value,” [3]  and Bernard Marr and his colleagues define knowledge management as a set of activities and processes aimed at creating value through generating and applying intellectual capital.

[4] Moreover, knowledge management has also been regarded as a “conscious strategy of getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time and helping people share and put information into action in ways that strive to improve organizational performance”. [5] Executives direct practices that create value from intangible organizational resources. For executives, it is clear that the objective of managing knowledge is to add value to organizations. The focus here is that executives consider the fact a firm’s knowledge is positively associated with its outcomes. This article portrays a more detailed picture of the effects of leadership and organizational factors on knowledge management performance that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past. Executives can use the model proposed in this article to improve knowledge management performance in companies.

What Can Executives Take From Previous Academic Research?

Executives that manage knowledge and use it as an important driving force for business success find their organization to be more competitive and on the cutting edge. However, knowledge management implementation in organizations is determined by a set of critical success factors, one of which is the strategic dimension of leadership. For now, executives can develop conducive organizational climates that foster collaboration and organizational learning in which knowledge, as a driver of improved performance, is shared and exploited. Academicians point out that if leaders do not adequately support knowledge dissemination and creation through various mechanisms such as rewards or recognition for employees who create new ideas or share their knowledge with others, knowledge management cannot be successful.

Furthermore, it is safe to say that knowledge management effectiveness can be enhanced today with the use of information technology. Information technology can play a critical role in the success of knowledge management.

For instance, a scholar in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) by the name of Kuan Yew Wong highlights the importance of information technology in facilitating knowledge flow and communication. [6] Ying-Jung Yeh and his colleagues at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and National Chung Cheng University indicate that the effectiveness of knowledge management implementation is positively associated with using information technology and setting up useful software and systems to enhance strategic decision-making. [7] Effective leaders can, therefore, develop information technology through employing IT professionals and allocating more budgetary resources to share and utilize knowledge within organizations.

Moreover, it is clear that executives around the globe realize that they play a critical role to achieve the best climate and for implementing knowledge management that creates learning and growing the organization. Engaging followers and getting them to participate in leadership activities is an important part of knowledge management practices. Scholars subsequently suggest that success is also dependent upon how executives formulated their organization’s mission, vision, and strategy.

The key is for executives to inculcate an effective strategy, culture and structure so that information can be found and used instantaneously. The fact that executives steer the strategic direction of organizations is indicative of empowering people and making them more responsive to the constant changes in technology, economic fluctuations, and other pertinent and vita changes that occur on a day-to-day basis.

Executives Are Now Introduced to the Proposed Model

Based on an integrated framework of the above ideas and scholarly research, I depict and applicable and reliable model for executives as Figure 1. This framework of the model highlights a relationship between knowledge management, leadership, strategy, culture, structure and information technology. I show the relationships in Figure 1. In Figure 1, leadership has a positive impact on knowledge management which leads to higher knowledge management performance. And finally, better strategy, better culture, better structure and better information technology lead to better  performance.

In Conclusion

This article blends scholarly concepts with real world application and investigates how scholarly research can be applied in the organizational boardroom. Also, scholars see that I expand upon the subject matter of organizational factors. Through introducing a more comprehensive model for implementation, I add to the current and extant literature. In particular, I suggest that if these factors are not completely in favor of supporting knowledge management, organizations cannot effectively implement knowledge management projects and may become obsolete, taken over, or acquired.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

References

[1] McCarthy, E.D. (1996). Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Routledge.

[2] Strasser, H., & Kleiner, M. (1998).  Knowledge as Culture: The New Sociology of Knowledge, European Sociological Review, 14(3), 315-318.

[3] Beckman, T.J. (1999). The Current State of Knowledge Management. In J. Liebowitz, (Eds.), Knowledge Management Handbook, New York: CRC Press.

[4] Marr, B., Gupta, O., Roos, G., & Pike, S. (2003). Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management Effectiveness. Management Decision, 41(8), 771-781.

[5] O’Dell C., & Grayson C.J. (1998). If only we knew what we know: identification and transfer of international best practices, New York: Free Press.

[6] Wong, K.Y. (2005). Critical Success Factors for Implementing Knowledge Management in Small and Medium Enterprises. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 105(3), 261-279.

[7] Yeh, Y.J., Lai, S.Q., & Ho, C.T. (2006). Knowledge management enabler: a case study. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 106(6), 793-810.