Knowledge and Process Management Volume 12 Number pp 259–277 (2005) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.234 & Research Article Towards Framework for Knowledge Management Implementation Ravi Shankar1* and Amol Gupta2 Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India GE Software Systems, Block A, First Floor South Wing, Cyber Gateways, HITEC City, Madhapur, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India The implementation of knowledge management (KM) in an organization involves the integration of knowledge from the domains of strategy, structure, processes, and technology These domains are generally underpinned—when assimilating roadmaps for holistic KM implementation—with standard KM models in the literature The pioneering models manifesting the holistic ‘growth’ of knowledge in an organization are generally used to underpin the knowledge-based segregation of organizational structure However, some authors take a critical view of such theoretical models, and instead suggest the knowledge process-based models manifesting the ‘circulation’ of knowledge as being a more practical approach to KM implementation This paper takes the implementation-oriented approach further, and modifies and integrates the fundamental aspects of KM advocated in these models resulting in the creation of an integrated KM model that renders a practical framework for the broad knowledge processes across the organization The essence of the proposed integrated model are the knowledge activities permeating an organization, which are categorized in terms of the cyclic knowledge processes of creation, organization, dissemination, and use of knowledge These processes traverse the segregated structure of an enterprise It is suggested that a modified knowledge-based segregation of enterprise into individual and group, organization, customer interface, and global enterprise be developed based on the cyclic knowledge processes Further, based on the proposed integrated model, an implementation framework is outlined manifesting the cyclic circulation of knowledge across the organization Such a framework can provide a link in the KM roadmaps between the abstract categorizations in KM models and the actual implementations using technologies, organizations, and people Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd INTRODUCTION To remain competent in the increasingly competitive global markets, enterprises must focus on a strategy to better manage the knowledge that is becoming their greatest asset Effectively and *Correspondence to: Dr Ravi Shankar, Associate Professor, Department of Management Studies, Viswakarma Building, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110 016, India E-mail: ravi1@dms.iitd.ernet.in Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd proactively capturing the dynamic customer demands and reorganizing its production processes and structure to meet these demands are the primary attributes of a ‘learning organization.’ In addition, greater innovation in product development and customer service entails an enhanced emphasis on the management of knowledge Knowledge assets in an organization, in form of the expertise of employees, production architectures, and IT systems and corporate repositories are considered the focal point for management of knowledge RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management This paper focuses on the use of fundamental KM models from literature to underpin the organizational structure and processes for KM implementation We suggest that the aspects advocated in these fundamental models may not be absolutely appropriate for KM implementation; rather, they may be molded to a form more suitable during the implementation phase For this, we identify from literature the fundamental aspects of KM pertinent to the design of knowledge processes and organizational structure (Section Introduction) These aspects are modified using a perspective oriented to sustaining knowledge creation when implementing KM in the organization (Section KM Models in Literature) The modified aspects are then integrated with the objective of proposing an integrated KM model that will be useful in knowledge-based segregation of organizational structure and the design of knowledge activities and processes (Section Modified Perspective of Fundamental KM Aspects) To provide a practical linkage for the proposed model, the pragmatic knowledge activities in an organization are then categorized in accordance with the model (Section Integrated KM Model) Finally, an implementation framework is outlined using the proposed integrated model to suggest future research direction for KM implementation frameworks (Section Knowledge Activities, Processes and Cycles) The strategies for knowledge management (KM) implementation in real world and in the research landscape are related to ‘personalization’ and ‘codification’ of knowledge (Hansen et al., 1999) In the personalization strategy, knowledge is closely tied to the person who created it and disseminated through person-to-person knowledge sharing networks In a codification strategy, a knowledge object is developed by removing customer or project sensitive information and stored in repositories for later use A company deploys a combination of these strategies focusing on one and using the other in a support function Addressing the strategy, Mentzas et al (2001) suggested that a holistic conceptual framework be created to provide a roadmap for managers in ensuring integrity in KM implementation efforts The roadmap suggests that successful KM implementation is a truly holistic venture that should leverage the knowledge assets and employee networks by integrating the four aspects of strategy, culture, processes, and KM system The generic roadmap for KM implementation is outlined in Figure Figure shows, as part of the generic strategic plan for KM implementation, the knowledge assets at the core that need to be integrated with the knowledge sharing networks/activities The design and categorization of the knowledge sharing activities depends on the structure and processes of the organization These activities are generally structured at the level of individual, team, organization, and interorganization as suggested by the archetypical segregated organizational structure and the paradigm of ‘growth’ of knowledge in the organization (Hedlund and Nonaka, 1993) Similarly, the knowledge processes related to creation, organization, dissemination of knowledge, etc are generally accepted for managing the knowledge sharing in organization Establishing culture and technological systems further enable the knowledge sharing activities KM MODELS IN LITERATURE Many KM models with different approaches and mindsets have been proposed in literature McAdam and McCreedy (1999) have identified three broad categories of KM models, namely knowledge category models, intellectual capital models, and socially constructed models Knowledge category models: These models advocate categorization of knowledge into discrete forms like codified and uncodified knowledge, Interorganization Structure Processes Individual Organization Assets Strategy Group Systems General strategic plan for holistic KM implementation Fundamental, theoretical manifestation based on paradigm of “growth and expansion” of knowledge Figure General roadmap for holistic knowledge management (KM) implementation 260 R Shankar and A Gupta Knowledge and Process Management diffused and undiffused knowledge, tacit and explicit knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) suggested a significant categorization of organizational knowledge that parallels the theoretical organizational levels of individual, group, organization, and interorganization (customers, suppliers, competitors) The model considers that knowledge is shared through social interactions, which begin at the individual level and then ‘grow and expand’ within the organization to include groups and the whole organization and finally transcend organizational boundaries That is, knowledge of individual becomes the knowledge of group through knowledge sharing among peers in the group Group knowledge then becomes organizational knowledge as the best practices in one group are institutionalized throughout the organization This knowledge further grows to interorganization level as it is shared with collaborators and used to service the customers Intellectual capital models: These models treat knowledge as an asset and segregate the organizational knowledge in correspondence to its intellectual assets For example, intellectual capital can be segregated into human, structural, and customer assets (Chase, 1997a; Roos and Roos, 1997) Socially constructed models: These models discuss KM focusing on the various knowledge processes (Demerest, 1997) Demerest’s model focuses on the knowledge processes in an organization such as the construction of knowledge, embodiment of constructed knowledge, dissemination of the espoused knowledge, and ultimately the use of knowledge for business advantages in regard to organizational outputs The essence of these models is to identify the simple flow of knowledge within and across knowledge processes The knowledge processes may simply be characterized as creation, organization, dissemination, and use of knowledge Apart from outlining these three categories of KM models in literature, McAdam and McCreedy (1999) criticize the knowledge category and intellectual capital models and suggest their inappropriateness with respect to KM implementation In turn, they advocate the socially constructed models having a knowledge process-based approach to have greater suitability for KM implementation McAdam and McCreedy (1999) also criticize the knowledge processes-based (socially constructed) Demerest (1997) model and augment the model to highlight certain guidelines for future Framework for KM Implementation RESEARCH ARTICLE research on implementation-oriented KM models These suggested guidelines are: (i) to incorporate the recursive and circulatory flow of knowledge across knowledge processes, (ii) to set up ‘use’ element for employee and business and (iii) to include both social and scientific aspects of KM implementation These modeling aspects are reflected in Figure The figure outlines the knowledge processes of creation, organization, dissemination, and use of knowledge It also shows the recursive flows of knowledge between processes and certain aspects important for KM implementation The recursive flows between processes represent the interactions; for example, the process of knowledge organization organizes the created knowledge, and doing this recursively leads to improvement in the created knowledge The dotted plain arrow shows the recursive flow of knowledge between creation and use process as suggested by McAdam and McCreedy (1999) We suggest a modification to it in next section; the dotted arrow is to be replaced by the modified arrow that is made bold to signify it as primary factor for sustaining knowledge creation in the organization From these discussions, three fundamental aspects of KM emerge from the literature: segregated organizational domains, knowledge assets, and knowledge processes We propose a KM model based on these aspects However, a modified perspective to these fundamental aspects is suggested by augmenting the corresponding standard KM models in the literature advocating these aspects The modified perspective aims at molding the fundamental aspects to make them more suitable for KM implementation In keeping with this approach, the discussions in the paper become three-pronged First, we present a modified perspective of the KM aspects corresponding to standard KM models in literature to suit certain implementation and sustainability criteria Second, we integrate these implementation suited KM aspects to synthesize a proposed integrated KM model Finally, we propose a framework for KM implementation underpinned by the integrated KM model and use it to suggest a research direction for the development of KM systems; the coherence of framework to literature is also discussed in terms of the accordance of the framework to the guidelines for KM research as suggested by McAdam and McCreedy (1999) 261 RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management Scientific aspects Social aspects KNOWLEDGE CREATION USE KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION Business benefits Employee ? Figure Cycle of knowledge processes in a process-based KM model MODIFIED PERSPECTIVE OF FUNDAMENTAL KM ASPECTS The three fundamental aspects of KM and the corresponding standard models considered are: segregated organizational domains by Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) model, knowledge assets by Chase (1997a) model, and knowledge processes model Table by McAdam and McCreedy (1999) and Demerest (1997) Table shows this modified perspective in comparison with the traditional perspective on KM models The model by McAdam and McCreedy (1999) advocates knowledge processes and recursive flows between them; we augment the model to emphasize a cycle of knowledge processes focusing Two perspectives on KM aspects Traditional perspective on KM aspects Modified perspective on KM aspects Traditional KM aspects KM models in literature Constituents Modified KM aspects Integrated KM model Knowledge processes Socially constructed models Creation, organization, dissemination, use Individual, group, organization, inter organization (customers, suppliers) Cycle of knowledge processes Socially constructed models Knowledge Organizational category models knowledge segregation based on ‘‘growth and expansion’’ aspect of knowledge Knowledge assets Intellectual capital Human, models structural, customer 262 Constituents Creation, organization, dissemination, use Individual Segregation based Knowledge category models and group, on cycles of organization, knowledge suppliers, processes customer interface, global enterprise Knowledge assets Intellectual capital Human, models structural, based on novel customer, virtual organizational enterprise segregation R Shankar and A Gupta Knowledge and Process Management on sustaining knowledge creation Incorporating this cyclic approach in KM implementation suggests a modified knowledge-based organizational segregation reflected in the Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) model The resulting organizational segregation is followed to suggest corresponding segregation of knowledge assets These views are presented in the following subsections RESEARCH ARTICLE new knowledge This model highlights the importance of a cycle among the knowledge processes to support sustaining of knowledge creation The cyclic approach to knowledge processes effects an augmented segregation of knowledgebased organizational domains in following subsection section Organizational structural segregation Cyclic knowledge processes Nonaka (1991, 1994) emphasized the critical necessity of sustaining the creation of knowledge in organizations Employees are the primary sources of innovations in an organization; however, there are several other significant activities that may generate fresh knowledge Knowledge managers identify and set up diverse activities aiming to sustain knowledge creation For example, incentives may be set up to encourage the use of captured knowledge; expertise in new domains may be developed through recruitment; and valuable information may be generated in repositories through techniques like data mining (O’Leary, 1998b) The activities relating to the use of existing knowledge in the organization primarily support the creation of new knowledge Employees use the learnings and experiences of their peers, from related projects in past, in their current assignments In the process, they generate fresh mindsets and knowledge pertinent to current projects Similarly, the mined customer-related data is analyzed for fraud detection, predicting future demands of customers, etc Organization uses current and predicted future customer demands to create flexibilities in their production architectures On basis of these observations—use of knowledge significantly leading to the creation of new knowledge—we propose a slight augmentation in the knowledge processes-based approach suggested by McAdam and McCreedy (1999) Processes relating to the organization, dissemination, and use of knowledge bolster the knowledge creation process through recursive flows of knowledge However, the recursive flow of knowledge between the processes of knowledge use and creation is primarily responsible for generation of new knowledge as compared to the recursive flow from processes of organization and dissemination The augmented model is shown in Figure Bold arrows in the figure represent the principal direction of knowledge flow while the plain arrows represent recursive flows except that the recursive arrow from use-process to creation-process (dotted arrow) is replaced by bold to suggest that use of knowledge primarily supports the creation of Framework for KM Implementation The cyclic knowledge processes-based approach tends to segregate a knowledge intensive organization into different domains, categorized as follows:  individual and group,  organization (suppliers, collaborators, competitors),  customer interface, and  global enterprise This proposed segregation differs from the fundamental knowledge-based segregation of organization suggested by Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) model:     individual, group, organization, and interorganization (customers, suppliers, competitors) The first domain in the segregated organization refers to an individual implicitly within his/her group’s domain To illustrate, in the process of creation of knowledge individuals work towards creation of fresh knowledge using their creativity, or report exceptional experiences in day-to-day work as part of the meetings organized by the group heads The group to which individuals belong organizes this knowledge created by the individuals in accordance to the standardized KM processes Processes are also set up to facilitate the sharing of knowledge among peers in the group; and this spurs the process of creation of new knowledge if the individuals analyze and exploit the available knowledge shared by peers in their respective assignments Therefore, to incorporate a cyclic approach of knowledge creation in a team the individual and his group need to be associated together Two arguments may arise with this implicit consideration of individuals in a group domain First, the explicit segregation level for individual in the Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) model, and second, the notion that cyclic knowledge processes can be applied at individual level Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) model puts individual and group knowledge in separate categories in accordance with a 263 RESEARCH ARTICLE theoretical view of ‘growth and expansion’ of knowledge from the individual to his/her group when individuals share their knowledge with the group peers Contending the arguments, our approach associates individual together with the group from the implementation point of view of a manager who designs the knowledge processes The knowledge processes of creation, organization, dissemination, and use in the context of individuals are too unstructured to be simulated by KM implementation infrastructure; an implementation infrastructure can, at most, support the knowledge processes in individual domain From the managerial perspective, setting up incentives may spur the knowledge processes of creation, dissemination, and use in an individual domain when the individual may create innovations, indulge in knowledge sharing and use the knowledge feedback from peers From the technological perspective, Personalization and Groupware technology can only support the knowledge processes in the individual domain by rendering relevant organization-wide knowledge contextually to each employee in the organization Therefore, combining the cyclic approach with the implementation point of view suggests individual to be just a part of a group Considering the next segregated domain, the Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) model advocates suppliers and collaborators working together with customers at the interorganization level However, following the cyclic approach necessitates considering suppliers and collaborators at the organization level Such a view advocates assembling organizational knowledge together with the knowledge of collaborators and suppliers in satisfying the dynamic demands of customer (Sanchez, 2001b) This kind of integration is most visible in the internet-based digital markets where the product needed by a particular customer may be assembled from various suppliers depending on the specifications selected by the customer The integration is also evident in the increasing integration of suppliers in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations of companies Consultants develop KM solutions as a part of broader ERP (Skyrme, 1999; Shankar and Jaiswal, 1999) Considering the next organizational domain, a separate domain of organization may be perceived explicitly for managing customer knowledge This is, in fact, evident in the modern business environments where organizations deploy IT applications like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to develop a customer interface for managing the customer knowledge These applications simulate the knowledge processes in context of customers to manage the customer knowledge (Bose and 264 Knowledge and Process Management Suguraman, 2003) Moreover, these applications are increasingly influencing the structure of the organization (Tsui and Garner, 2000) IBM reengineered its CRM process to integrate it with KM to enable the integration of knowledge from the frontend to the back-end (Massey et al., 2001) The integrated model proposed in this paper will identify a cycle of knowledge processes at the customer interface Finally, a separate domain in the model is realized to enable enhanced sharing of knowledge in a globally distributed enterprise This is imperative in the increasingly networked world The global enterprises have realized the importance of analyzing the global market conditions to be able to forecast possible future changes in their local and global environments Summarizing, a cyclic approach to knowledge processes groups individual and groups at the same level from an implementation point of view It also groups the suppliers or collaborators along with the organization at the organization level The importance of customer-related and enterprise-wide knowledge suggests separate organizational segregation for each of these domains Considering the third fundamental aspect of KM, knowledge assets are central to any KM implementation effort Mentzas et al (2001) suggest that, in essence, KM is working to better manage the content, quality, value, and transferability of knowledge assets We follow, in this paper, a knowledge asset categorization corresponding to the segregated domains of organization proposed above Organizational knowledge assets The organizational segregation proposed in the previous section suggests the following component assets of organizational knowledge: a knowledge in the form of experiences, expertise of individuals and groups; b knowledge of organization that pervades its production architectures involving knowledge gathered from suppliers and collaborators; knowledge embedded in the IT systems and pertinent data warehouses and knowledge bases; c knowledge regarding customers; and, d knowledge shared in a global enterprise This categorization of organizational knowledge finds harmony with the categorization of intellectual assets suggested by Chase (1997a): human assets (knowledge, experience), structural assets (processes, information systems), and customer R Shankar and A Gupta Knowledge and Process Management assets (customer relationships, brands) In addition to these assets, we have added the knowledge shared across the virtual enterprise—that is, technology-enabled knowledge sharing among peer organizations across geographical boundaries—as a knowledge asset Summarizing the modified perspective on fundamental KM aspects derived from the literature from an implementation point of view: a cyclic approach to knowledge processes, aiming to sustain knowledge creation, effects practical segregations of organization; be it be the knowledge based segregation into individual and group, organization and suppliers, customer interface and global enterprise or the segregation of its knowledge assets into human, structural, customer, virtual enterprise This modified perspective is used to evolve an integrated KM model that aims to render an approach useful for the design of knowledge activities and processes for implementing KM across the organization INTEGRATED KM MODEL The integrated KM model is developed to cater to the practical aspects that managers may consider while setting up the knowledge processes in an organization Some of these aspects relevant in the context of this paper are stated Generally, knowledge-focused activities already exist in any knowledge-enabled organization Knowledge processes may then be designed to clearly identify these activities, enable them and organize them for effective process integration Apart from this, managers need to design processes according to the theories of KM in order to capture and store knowledge from various assets and disseminate it across various departments in the organization Moreover, the design of similar activity or process may vary from one department to another depending on the functionality and context in which the knowledge is required In these cases, the process should be customized according to the need(s) in the particular organizational domain On this basis, two guidelines are outlined for any implementation-oriented KM model: (i) the model should categorize the activities that constitute knowledge processes, and (ii) the model should categorize the processes according to the different domains of the organization To further develop the integrated KM model following these guidelines, the integration of the implementation-oriented perspectives on KM Framework for KM Implementation RESEARCH ARTICLE (knowledge assets, cyclic knowledge processes and organizational segregation proposed in previous section) appear best suited To show this, these perspectives are analyzed using a pragmatic bottom-up approach to set them as the attributes of the integrated KM model (represented by the two leftmost parts of Figure 6, discussed in later section) The most fundamental aspect of any organizational business is the hands-on activities performed for the business The hands-on activities relating to KM are the pragmatic knowledge-focused activities that infuse any knowledge-enabled organization The essence of knowledge-focused activities is essentially the knowledge content that originates in the various knowledge assets in the organization So, it seems obvious that the activities and knowledge assets should be the elementary focus area for any KM implementation effort Thus, the focus in this paper is on these activities and the processes in which they are embedded Knowledge-focused activities permeate every department of a knowledge-enabled organization These activities may be categorized under one of the processes of creation, organization, dissemination, and use of organizational knowledge In addition, ideally, these activities should be designed and arranged cyclically by process designers who aim to effectively support and sustain the process of knowledge creation For example, managers should set up mechanisms and incentives to promote reuse of knowledge captured in groups Thus, the proposed cyclic approach to knowledge processes is appropriate in outlining one attribute of the integrated KM model, that is, the categorization of knowledge-focused activities in an organization In the broader context of knowledge processes that embed the activities, the design of same type of knowledge process may differ in different domains/departments of the organization For example, in the individual and group domain the process of organizing knowledge is designed with aim of capturing day-to-day problematic issues and pertinent improvisations to address these issues carried by team members, while same processes (relating to the organizing of knowledge) at the company-wide level are designed with the aim of capturing the learnings and experiences from projects successfully completed by the company The difference in the design of the same processes for organizing knowledge in the domains of group and whole company respectively is due to the distinct characteristics of knowledge assets in these domains; that is, tacit knowledge-based improvisations by team members at the group level, and 265 RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management experiences related to project at the company level Thus, the practical segregation of organizational domains and their assets (suggested in previous section) is appropriate as another attribute of the implementation-oriented KM model This discussion shows that the aspects of cyclic knowledge processes, knowledge assets, and organizational segregation need to be considered together in order to address to the two guidelines set up for implementation-oriented KM models An approach that unifies these fundamental aspects is manifested in the integrated KM model as illustrated in Figure Figure delineates the integrated KM model as segregated into four different levels (of individual and group, organization, customer interface, and global enterprise) with cyclic knowledge processes (of creation, organization, dissemination, and use of knowledge) occurring at each level and leveraging the relevant knowledge assets (tacit knowl- edge, production architectures, customer-related knowledge, and knowledge shared across the global enterprise) at that level The funnel shape of model notionally signifies the ‘growth’ of knowledge as it traverses up the organizational hierarchy as suggested by Hedlund and Nonaka (1993) Going forward, the paper renders a more practical view to the integrated KM model KNOWLEDGE ACTIVITIES, PROCESSES, AND CYCLES The knowledge-focused activities and processes are designed with the goal of effectively enabling the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of knowledge in the organization Deploying a process across the whole organization, however, often requires assigning different orientations to the same process at different levels of the organization Organization Dissemination and analysis Enterprise-wide strategic and technical knowledge Creation Use GLOBAL ENTERPRISE Organization Dissemination and analysis Customer-related knowledge Creation Use CUSTOMER INTERFACE Dissemination and analysis Organization Product and process architectures and Knowledge repositories Creation Use ORGANIZATION Organization Dissemination and analysis Tacit knowledge Creation Use INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP Figure Integrated KM model 266 R Shankar and A Gupta Knowledge and Process Management For example, the process of knowledge creation in the context of a group has an altogether different goal and orientation in design as compared to the creation process in the context of customers The varying goals and orientations of knowledge processes across the whole organization can be related to the holistic Integrated KM model as illustrated in Table Such holistic categorization of processes enables the corresponding categorization of the constituting knowledge-focused activities permeating the whole organization It is important to state that the activities are very broadly categorized, that is, rather than discussing how an activity may be designed, the crux of the discussion is: what activities may be a part of a knowledge process in the organization Creation of knowledge In the domains of the individual and group, the design of processes relating to the creation of knowledge are oriented to setting up activities that assist generation of fresh tacit knowledge Knowledge-creating activities in the individual and group domains are generally in the form of innovations by individuals and knowledge sharing among individuals in groups Innovation by individuals is generally enhanced in development teams by facilitating access to knowledge in related fields Innovation is a part of job for such teams However, achieving knowledge creation by getting individuals in groups to share knowledge involves developing a culture of knowledge sharing Aiming to achieve it, managers identify and set up activities for knowledge sharing in groups and set up appropriate mechanisms and incentives For example, knowledge workers may be selected for each team to organize weekly meetings to enable the sharing of experiences, such as problems faced during the work and the corresponding knowledgebased improvization that was needed to address these problems (Brown and Duguid, 2000) The incentives and benchmarks that are intended to promote knowledge sharing need to be strong enough to attract participation in knowledgesharing activities Knowledge-sharing activities in and across groups may further be enabled technologically For example, groupware enables the individual to easily set up virtual teams on a topic or join existing organization-wide forums to get an answer to a query (Pohs et al., 2001) Moreover, relevant organization-wide integrated knowledge may be proactively pushed in the context of the individual or group domains by deploying Personalization technology In particular, an Framework for KM Implementation RESEARCH ARTICLE organization may update its employees with customer-specific knowledge in order to ensure appropriate customer-specific interaction and to stimulate innovation This may involve developing appropriate organizational taxonomy related to projects, products, technology, and customers, that is conveniently accessible through the organizational portal Thus, it is the right combination of aspects relating to the scope of IT, developing an appropriate culture and incentives that should be the focal point for management in developing an activity or process for enabling creation of knowledge in individual and group domain In the organizational domain, the process of the ‘creation’ of knowledge encompasses activities for developing and improving organizational production assets, that is the product and process architectures The increasingly volatile market conditions faced by today’s organizations drives them to develop modularity in their production architectures Modularity of architectures basically refers to the ability to reassemble the components represented in a particular architectures to bring out a wide range of products in order to meet the diverse customer demands It also provides the ability to leverage the existing customer knowledge in proactively capturing the market through customization of products Designing modularity in production architectures includes activities for developing flexibility related to both the product and process architectures An organization may deploy all existing knowledge to engineer product architectures flexible enough to satisfy current and near-future demand of organizational products in market (Sanchez, 1999) If the existing product architecture is not compatible with these demands, it designs and uses its process architecture to acquire the know-whats, -whys, and -hows of collaborators in order to be able to redesign the product architecture Generally, vendors have the capability to supply the resulting standardized modular components of the product architecture Otherwise, the organization may set up development groups in order to develop these capabilities within the organization To further enable their production architectures, organization deploys IT enablers like ERP systems to semi-automate the flow of information between core business processes ERP solutions typically capture both information and process knowledge in the form of encapsulated business rules Codifying these business rules enables the process of capturing business critical information Another IT enabler emerging in the Internet-age is what may be referred to as the ‘corporate ecosystem.’ Such 267 268 Use of knowledge and related goal Process Orientation: Proactive strategies for capturing customer knowledge Goal: Enhanced capture of customer preferences, support planning future generation modular architectures Process Orientation: Dissemination of customer demands to organizational and customer interface processes; analysis of customer knowledge Goal: Real-time personalized service to customers, knowledge-based prediction of future customer behavior and demands Process Orientation: Dissemination of explicit knowledge to individual and groups, analysis of customer knowledge captured in customer interface domain Goal: Proactive push of knowledge to employees, discover knowledge deficiency related to linkages among business processes for improving their modularity Process Orientation: Dissemination of knowledge to peers and groups Goal: Enabling creativity of individuals, institutionalization of best practices Process Orientation: Acquisition of knowledge deficiency in architectures Goal: Developing future generation modular architectures Process Orientation: Integration of customer knowledge in real-time customer interface repositories, and with back-end repositories Goal: Categorizing the customer knowledge Enabling customeroriented tasks by individuals and groups Process Orientation: Capture and standardization of organization-wide tacit and explicit knowledge Goal: Preservation, standardization, integration, and easy and contextual accessibility of knowledge Organization of knowledge and Process Orientation: Capturing related goal tacit knowledge and facilitating its search and retrieval Goal: Enabling preservation of tacit knowledge, and access to knowledge Process Orientation: Analysis and reuse of the captured tacit knowledge Goal: Enhancing creation and quality of knowledge Process Orientation: Capture of customer behavior and demands Goal: Leveraging the knowledge captured in CRM system, leveraging the flexibility of organizational architectures Process Orientation: Improvement in modular product, process, and knowledge rchitectures and related IT systems Goal: Maintaining the flexibility of architectures Process Orientation: Creation of tacit knowledge Goal: Support creativity and innovation, enabling customeroriented innovations, enabling knowledge sharing Creation of knowledge and related goal Dissemination and analysis of knowledge, and related goal Customer interface Organization Individual and group Organizational domains Knowledge processes orientations and goals in domains of organizational segregation Knowledge processes Table Process Orientation: Sharing knowledge across all dimensions of peer organizations in the Global Enterprise Goal: Developing an integrated system Global enterprise RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management R Shankar and A Gupta Knowledge and Process Management systems are being designed to attain additional flexibilities for providing real-time service to customers by integrating the three key performance drivers of people, process and technology with the collaborators through the use of IT (Chase, 1997b; Greenberg, 2001) In summary, the knowledge creation process in the organizational domain involves activities related to the design of its product and process architectures and related IT systems through the deployment of all its knowledge along with the knowledge of collaborators The organization may also deliberately acquire new capabilities by setting up teams and activities to innovatively develop them The knowledge ‘creation’ process in the customer interface domain is oriented to capture the customer behavior and demands Customer-related knowledge might be acquired in KM systems by setting up activities that leverage the knowledge captured in CRM applications, and by managing the customer knowledge that is captured through various marketing strategies (Sanchez, 2001b) The KM system is integrated with CRM applications to leverage the customer-related knowledge captured across various customer touch points (Bose and Suguraman, 2003; Gebert et al., 2003) The CRM applications capture information and knowledge from a variety of internal and external sources, for example transaction information from operational databases and standard operating procedures from official documents For this, CRM applications typically deploy agents to capture the information along the categories like customer transactions and profiles, and knowledge related to organizational business processes and industry Exploring customer response to a wide range of product variations creates broader knowledge about customer preferences Deeper market learning is achieved by letting individual customers configure the combination of modular components they prefer In this manner, the firm rapidly discovers customer knowledge through real-time marketing when a large range of products is brought to market in a short span of time Such strategies enable the organization to leverage the modularity in organizational product and process architectures in order to capture customer knowledge Organization of knowledge In the individual and group domains, the process of knowledge organization may be oriented to capturing tacit knowledge and making the search for and retrieval of knowledge easy In order to capture tacit knowledge of individuals and groups, Framework for KM Implementation RESEARCH ARTICLE they are encouraged to document knowledge from their day-to-day transactions, project- or product-related experiences, and customer-related learnings into tangible forms like documents Managers design standard templates for knowledge objects such as documents for ease of knowledge codification However, groups need to be given the flexibility to suggest novel templates according to their practical requirements Such balance between the process and practice is critical to the success of KM implementation (Brown and Duguid, 2000) Subsequent to their creation, the knowledge objects need to be stored in organizational knowledge repositories in order to enable preservation of knowledge on a wider scale and for use over a period of time (Davenport et al., 1998) The activities for making search and retrieval of tacit knowledge encompass the cultural and technological aspects related to the approachability of and knowledge sharing stance adopted by experts Managers may identify experts from various domains of organizational business practices to set up practical one-to-one assistance to individuals and groups in solving problems they face These experts should be available in person or may be contacted through the organizational portal Managers need to enable easy access to and subsequent approachability of the experts by designing easyto-use channels over the organizational portal and by encouraging the experts to rapidly solve the issues raised by employees from any business practice in the organization Again, the facets of IT (organizational portal), culture (approachability), and incentives come into picture These aspects are the integral requirement of any knowledge search and retrieval process related to the individual and group domains In the organization domain, the processes relating to the organization of knowledge refer to the capture and standardization of organizationwide knowledge It is important to note that the creation of modular product and process architectures and related IT systems help an organization to make its current technical and market information and knowledge explicit (Sanchez, 1999; Al-Mashari, 2001) and are likely to be of significant strategic importance Organizations develop modular product and process architectures by deploying their existing technical and market knowledge In the creation of these architectures and systems, organization can identify modular ‘knowledge architecture’ to detect knowledge evolving around the functional components of these architectures or systems The knowledge architecture is treated as a knowledge asset that enables 269 RESEARCH ARTICLE the organization to capture tacit knowledge in its product and process architectures in explicit form and thus organize tacit knowledge for improvement of production architectures Technologically, the basic objective for organizing the company-wide knowledge is to preserve, standardize, integrate, and render easy access to contextual knowledge through an easy-to-use KM portal For this, firms set up and integrate various knowledge repositories related to the individual, group, and organization domains The knowledge, experiences, and learnings, best practices documented by individuals and groups from all domains of the organization may be stored for potential reuse over time Organization-wide forums can be designed to enable discussion on diverse topics in order to allow for the identification and sharing of relevant knowledge Knowledge maps may be set up in order to provide pointers to people and knowledge repositories allowing for the identification of relevant knowledge that can be reused (Apostolou and Mentzas, 1999) Further, knowledge relating to business processes that has now been made explicit (knowledge architecture) can be standardized and stored in knowledge repositories to enable its access and exploitation over time and scale (Szykman et al., 2000) The KM perspective advocates following: the approaches that generate knowledge from the transactional data and information collected across; the applications for traditional business processes such as PDM (Product Data Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management), ERP and CRM (Fahey et al., 2001; Skok and Legge 2002) In particular, an ERP system enables the organization to leverage its knowledge as it typically captures both information and process knowledge KM activities then may be oriented towards end user reports and business intelligence tools ERP systems have all the data warehouses to facilitate the integration of the information from organizational databases to support managerial decision making (Kimball and Ross, 2002) In the customer interface domain, the process of organizing customer knowledge may be oriented towards integrating the real-time front-end repositories and, in addition, integrating these repositories with organizational repositories pertinent to product development The basic aims are, respectively, to set up knowledge repositories to store different categories of customer-related knowledge and to enable tasks to be more precisely customized to each customer Customer-focused tasks may be enabled by updating knowledge regarding customer demands which have been 270 Knowledge and Process Management made (and captured) at the individual and group level of the organization This may be made possible either through social interaction with customerfacing teams, or by providing consistent on-line access to customer preferences through the organizational portal This will ensure that any new product development is consistent with the latest demands of customers Customer knowledge may be categorized into knowledge repositories Various types of knowledge repositories in the customer interface domain may be related to customer transactions, customer profiles, policies and procedures, and domain knowledge The customer transactions repository contains particulars about all the transactions related to customers The customer profile repository contains the background of each customer along with customer history and preferences The policies and procedure repository contains information regarding standard procedures and policies that have to be followed in handling a particular situation involving customers The domain knowledge repository contains information about the industry in general, and the latest developments and trends within that industry that decision makers have to be aware of, such as changes in governmental regulations, benchmarks, etc These are likely to have an impact on customer preferences and subsequent demand (Bose and Suguraman, 2003) Dissemination and analysis of knowledge In the individual and group domains, the process of dissemination of knowledge encompasses activities that aim to enhance the creativity of individuals and groups by institutionalizing the knowledge of individuals and groups for peers in the group or other groups Knowledge-sharing activities across groups may involve the best practice sessions that may be held to enable the sharing of knowledge applicable in different practices of the organization Individuals may also analyze the relevant organization-wide knowledge pushed to them in their context from the organizational portal Technology, however, can only facilitate the sharing of knowledge; it is the employees who have to analyze and apply it Therefore, incentives again play a significant role in spurring the sharing of knowledge Contextually pushing the organization-wide knowledge to individuals and groups is one of the major activities addressed by the process of dissemination of knowledge in the organizational domain The organization deploys personalization technology to filter the knowledge captured in the organizational repositories and match it to the R Shankar and A Gupta Knowledge and Process Management knowledge needs of the employees in the context of tasks at hand Employee profiles are the critical enablers for filtering the knowledge from the repositories The process of analysis of explicit knowledge in the organization domain should aim at improving the modularity of product and process architectures In case the customer demands a product that cannot be produced by the company (this information being captured and disseminated to the organizational domain from the customer interface domain), experts need to analyze the existing level of modularity in the product and process architectures to discover areas of knowledge deficiency The process of knowledge organization (in the organizational domain) can enable this analysis as it captures and standardizes the knowledge deployed in the design of production architectures and IT systems in the data warehouse and other knowledge repositories In the customer interface domain, the process of dissemination of customer knowledge is oriented to forward customer demands to product and process architectures in the organizational domain, and to the front end processes in the customer interface domain Dissemination of customer demands to the business processes enables the experts to analyze their compatibilities in the product and process architectures to discover deficiencies in the knowledge architecture The knowledge regarding customer behavior is disseminated to customer interfacing teams in order to enable activities related to searching and retrieving relevant knowledge to be utilized in different scenarios The basic aim is to provide real-time personalized service to customers It may also involve developing the interface to the knowledge repositories Various agents can be deployed, like a repository management agent for browsing specific knowledge elements relevant to a particular problem at hand; a situation analysis agent to enable mechanisms for the user to undertake real-time problem solving and decision making activities The process of analyzing customer-related knowledge aims to predict the future behavior and demands of customers Customer-related knowledge captured and integrated in a data warehouse and the customer-interface repositories is analyzed by use of techniques like on-lineanalytical-processing and data/web-usage mining that can support: (i) decision-making, by mining the customer transactions for summarizing the customer behavior, and (ii) prediction of future customer preferences, by combining the current and historical customer preferences To illustrate, Framework for KM Implementation RESEARCH ARTICLE agents may be deployed such as, a predictive modeling agent that integrates business logic into the tools and conducts meta-analysis; and a marketing automation agent that permits the marketing people to really see trends from individual customers and develop better marketing campaigns (Bose and Suguraman, 2003) Use of knowledge and associated cycles Various kinds of cycles are discussed in literature involving individuals and groups For example, Sanchez (2001a) suggests five learning cycles that are necessary in order to develop a learning, competent organization The cycle of knowledge processes exists for an individual, for a group, for the individual to group interactions, for the groupto-group interactions, and for the organization as a whole The cycle of knowledge processes for individuals and groups starts with the creation of tacit knowledge when individuals and groups work developing customer-oriented innovations supported by contextual push of knowledge from the organization The created knowledge is captured in documents for preservation and use over time Dissemination of knowledge occurs when individuals and groups share their knowledge and learnings with peers Individuals may analyze and use the knowledge/feedback of peers to further enhance their creativity and enable the creation of fresh ideas This completes the cycle of knowledge processes at the individual and group level, with use of knowledge leading both to the creation of new knowledge and enhancing the quality of existing knowledge To identify the cycle of knowledge processes at the organization level, the knowledge process of creation at organization level is suggested as the creation of modular production architectures and IT systems, and the acquisition of related knowledge Knowledge architecture is identified and organization-wide knowledge is captured and organized in repositories The customer demands captured in customer interface repositories and integrated into organizational repositories are analyzed according to the product and process architectures to create the required product However, if the product and process architectures not have the capability of satisfying the newly recognized customer demands, these need to be redesigned (through use of collaborators’ knowledge, through innovation, or through the recruitment of new individuals to fill the knowledge deficiency in the knowledge architecture) Such actions potentially lead to the 271 RESEARCH ARTICLE creation of new product, process, and knowledge architectures To identify the cycle of knowledge processes at the customer interface, the customer-related knowledge ‘‘created’’ by the deployment of strategies aimed at increasing the breadth and/or depth of the product line or the speed with which customer needs are satisfied, or captured by the CRM systems, is encoded in the customer knowledge repositories Customer-specific knowledge is then disseminated to customer facing teams by deploying agents over the organizational portal These teams use the customer-specific knowledge in servicing the customer and provide feedback for the enhanced capture of customer preferences thus completing the cycle of knowledge processes at customer interface Similarly, the future demands of customer that are predicted through the analysis of captured customer knowledge are used to drive the deployment of strategies aimed at increasing the breadth and/or depth of the product line or the speed with which customer needs are satisfied for enhancing customer knowledge Enterprise It is possible that the globally distributed peers in an enterprise might be integrated electronically thus creating a ‘virtual enterprise’ (Miller et al., 1993) The knowledge processes for the enterprise enable knowledge sharing across the domains of individuals and groups, organization, and customer interface levels Knowledge processes across the virtual enterprise are enabled through links strengthened by webs of communication technologies Unlike conventional teams, a ‘virtual team’ supports working across geographical distances, with people who have perhaps never met with each other Thus, they may not be fully acquainted with the organizations’ culture and mechanisms for knowledge sharing (Lipnack and Stamps, 1997; Jarvenpaa and Shaw, 1998) Summarizing the section, in the context of the integrated KM model, the knowledge-focused activities permeating an organization may be identified and categorized as different manifestations of knowledge processes The activities are also cyclically integrated in each domain of the organization (individual, group, organization, customer-interface, and virtual enterprise) with the aim of sustainining knowledge creation within these domains Moreover, some activities/processes also transcend domains, the simplest examples being the proactive push of organizational and customer knowledge to individuals and groups The integration of such processes needs to be clearly identified in order to develop a truly 272 Knowledge and Process Management holistic KM implementation Such integration in and across domains can be as achieved by adopting an implementation framework based on the integrated KM model PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR KM IMPLEMENTATION The framework outlines components corresponding to the knowledge processes (creation, organization, dissemination, and use) and organizational structure (individual and group, organization, customer-interface and virtual enterprise) proposed by the integrated KM model (Figure 4) The framework also shows notionally (as discussed in the previous section and Table 2) the flow of knowledge between processes in each domain of the organization in the form of recursive flows and the cyclic creation of knowledge In addition, the framework shows arrows between domains to emphasize the flow of knowledge across these domains leading the ‘growth’ of knowledge and the provision of feedback of knowledge These flows may be unstructured, semistructured, and structured (i) Unstructured knowledge flow represents the ‘‘application-learning’’ on the part of individuals and groups in the organization and for organization as a whole Individuals and groups apply knowledge directed towards customer-oriented product and process innovations, and learn from the associated experiences The organization then applies these product and process architectures and learns by leveraging customer knowledge captured through a customer interface The newly discovered customer knowledge, along with the existing organizational knowledge, is made available to individuals and groups to act as the basis of further innovations thus completing the ‘organizational learning cycle.’ The bold arrows in Figure highlight such an organizational learning cycle To capture and leverage the unstructured knowledge, managers set up technologies for communication between teams Incentives are also set up for individuals and teams to document their experiences so that it may be stored as semistructured knowledge in repositories for use over time and scale (ii) Semi-structured knowledge flow basically represents the collection and storage of the text and hypertext documents codifying the unstructured knowledge and experiences of R Shankar and A Gupta Knowledge and Process Management RESEARCH ARTICLE Proactive facilitation of organizational knowledge and customer demands to individuals and groups INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP ORGANIZATION Modular product process and knowledge architectures; Knowledge sharing with collaborators Employee creativity and customer oriented innovations U s e CUSTOMER INTERFACE Access to experts; Documentation of created tacit knowledg e U s e Capture of product, process and expert’s knowledge Sharing of knowledge with peers Integration of core business practices with market demands Sharing Sharing CRM systems; Strategies to capture market knowledge U s e Integration of captured customer knowledge Prediction of future market and customer trends Sharing Sharing of knowledge across the global enterprise Figure Proposed KM implementation framework individuals and groups, and the learnings of the organization as a whole into the organizational repository These flows are basically enabled through document and content management solutions (iii) Structured knowledge flow represents the integration of customer-related and organizational repositories to semi-automate the flow of information These flows are basically enabled through IT systems like ERP and CRM Thus, as it aims to track and capture the unstructured, semi-structured, and structured knowledge across the organization, and facilitate the dissemination of this knowledge to individuals and groups, a KM system can be based on the framework (Figure 5) Figure outlines the KM technologies, in and across the segregated domains that have been mentioned in the previous section as enablers of the knowledge-focused activities In brief, the information and knowledge captured from various Framework for KM Implementation domains is integrated to facilitate contextual access for employees, customers, and collaborators through an easy-to-use enterprise knowledge portal The outlined KM system finds harmony with the converting and connecting paradigm of KM systems suggested by O’Leary (1998a) Research direction The proposed KM implementation framework is based on the knowledge activities and processes across the organizational segregated structure The presented outline of knowledge activities and processes in the framework renders a clear picture for designing activity or process-specific KM technologies The manifestation of cycles in the framework can be used for integrating the activity specific technology in order to bolster knowledge creation Very broadly, this aspect is outlined as part of the generic roadmap for KM implementation (Figure 6) To develop the activity-specific KM technology, one needs to focus on the fundamental aspects of 273 RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management Figure KM system based on implementation framework KM: knowledge assets, processes, and segregated structure Developing the technology to enable an activity necessitates the considerations of goal of the relevant process and the source and terminal knowledge assets In order to bolster cyclic knowledge creation, the technology enabling each process needs to be cyclically structured across domains is also shown to evolve cyclic flow of knowledge in learning organization The knowledge-focused activities and the enabling KM technologies incorporate both the social and scientific aspects of KM respectively CONCLUSION Coherence with literature The KM framework in this paper is consistent with the guidelines presented by McAdam and McCreedy (1999) The reiterate, the suggested guidelines are: (i) to incorporate the recursive and circulatory flow of knowledge across the knowledge processes, (ii) to set up ‘use’ element for employee and business, and (iii) to include both social and scientific aspects of KM implementation The ‘use’ element for employees has been shown as an explicit component in the framework that enables proactive knowledge to employees The framework shows the recursive and circulatory flow of knowledge between knowledge processes based on the knowledge process model by McAdam and McCreedy (1999) The recursive flow 274 Knowledge-focused activities permeate any knowledge-enabled organization, and implementing KM involves, among other aspects, setting up processes and systems to enable these activities Accordingly, this paper provides a categorization for knowledge activities and their associated processes across the organization In addition, we have developed an integrate KM framework The design of knowledge processes across the organization may have different orientations depending on the goals of managing knowledge in corresponding domains of the organization Therefore, this paper categorized knowledge processes of creation, organization, dissemination and use, by using the fundamental aspects of organizational segregated structure and assets advocated in some standard KM models in literature However, keeping a practical approach and aiming to sustain knowledge creation, these aspects were modified and integrated in order R Shankar and A Gupta RESEARCH ARTICLE Figure Roadmap for KM implementation Knowledge and Process Management Framework for KM Implementation 275 RESEARCH ARTICLE to create an ‘Integrated KM model’ for holistic implementation The integrated model suggests the structural segregation of organization into individual and group, organization, and collaborators, customer interface and global enterprise It also advocates cycles of knowledge processes at each of these levels From an implementation view for managers designing processes, the knowledge processes are too unstructured in the context of individuals to be simulated by KM implementation infrastructure However, applying a cyclic approach 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