Editorial
Knowledge management (KM) has been a topic of considerable researcher and
practitioner interest the past several years. Although a well-established tradition of
organizational learning research could be considered an adumbration if not a forerunner
of organizational KM, KM as a research discipline has drawn less from organizational
learning than from strategy research, namely the resource-based view of the ®rm. Building
on the resource-based theory which argues that it is the services rendered by a ®rm's
tangible resources, rather than the resources in and of themselves, that create a ®rm's
competitive advantage (Barney, 1991; Conner, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984), the knowledge-
based perspective of the ®rm posits that the services rendered by tangible resources depend
upon how the resources are combined and applied Ð a function of the ®rm's know-how or
knowledge, an intangible resource. Because knowledge-based resources are dif®cult to
imitate and are socially complex, the knowledge-based view of the ®rm suggests that
knowledge assets may produce sustainable competitive advantage. Given the perceived
centrality of knowledge assets to organizational competitiveness, the management of an
organization's knowledge has assumed a role of critical importance. Already by 1998,
one survey revealed that one in ten ®rms claimed that KM was transforming the way
their organization did business and 43% claimed to be undertaking a KM initiative
(KPMG, 1998).
In practice, KM initiatives have been prompted by several factors, among them
employee turnover, rapid ®rm growth, and pressures to reduce cycle times. The loss of
key personnel results in a concomitant loss of that individual's knowledge. One survey of
European ®rms found that half of those surveyed reported to have suffered signi®cant
damage from losing key employees with impaired client or supplier relations and loss of
income being the most widely cited damages (Nolan Norton, 1998). While larger
organizations face a problem of employee mobility, smaller ®rms, particularly startups
in the fast-paced ecommerce sector, face the problem of such rapid organizational growth
that the assimilation of new employees is dif®cult. This has prompted interest in
knowledge repositories to help bring new employees quickly to a productive capacity.
Finally, pressures to respond quickly to bid proposals, or to bring products to market
faster, necessitates intense coordination of a ®rm's knowledge resources. Too many
®rms face problems maintaining, locating, and applying their own knowledge (Cran®eld,
1998), which, if readily assessible, would enable them to reduce cycle times. For example,
Ford found that by sharing knowledge internally, the development time for cars was
Journal of Strategic Information Systems 9 (2000) 101±105
0963-8687/00/$ - see front matter q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0963-8687(00)00039-1
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