Knowledge management practices within a knowledge‐intensive firm: the significance of the people management dimension

This paper draws attention to the potentially focal role that appropriate people management practices can and do play in facilitating knowledge management within the context of a specialist consulting firm that sustains its competitive advantage through processes of knowledge creation. The paper highlights the way in which traditional approaches to people management issues such as recruitment and selection, professional development etc. are not necessarily appropriate or relevant when managing an expert workforce that expects and demands considerable levels of autonomy. The findings highlight that perhaps too much reliance has been placed on technological solutions to KM to date. Hence the paper emphasises the highly situated and contextual nature of KM and the practices or systems in support of KM, which existing literature in this field has failed to adequately address.