Knowledge Management and Virtual Organizations
Knowledge Management and Virtual Organizations
Edited by Yogesh MalhotraIdea Group PublishingISBN 187828973X$149.95
Keywords Knowledge management, Virtual organizations, Technology
Knowledge management has been a "hot topic" for some time – yet many books on the topic are still at the "gee whiz, isn't it grand"level. Few of them suggest how KM might be managed within an organisation at the practical level. Of course it is necessary to understand the underlying concept– but it is also important to be able to translate this into practical action. This is particularly true since the technologies surrounding KM are continually developing. This is therefore a timely book which does address the issue of practical deployment. The book assumes the reader is already aware of the basic concepts and moves on to deliver the distilled experience and knowledge of leading worldwide experts from high-level research programs and companies including American Management Systems, Bristol Myers Squibb,@Brint.com, Ernst & Young, and, IBM – from the USA, and others from UK,Switzerland, Austria, Australia, The Netherlands, Canada, Italy, Finland and Portugal.
Issues addressed include :
How can a company make a strategic case for knowledge management by rethinking given assumptions about people, processes and technologies?
How can that company apply knowledge management for business model innovation, redefining the business ecosystem, and developing virtual teams and virtual communities?
How does one leverage new information technologies, including Internet and WWW in powering the knowledge-enabled transformation of the organisation?
How does the organisation benefit from and deploy knowledge management processes, such as knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, knowledge acquisition,knowledge exchange, and knowledge transfer?
The first section of the book covers frameworks, models, analyses, cases studies and research on the integration of knowledge management within virtual organisations, virtual teams and virtual communities of practice. Key themes covered in this section include business model innovation; design of virtual organisation forms including virtual corporations, Net-based models, virtual teams and inter-organisational networks; strategies and technologies for knowledge management; tools, techniques and methodologies for enabling knowledge capture, knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer as well as related collaboration, competition and co-optation at intra- and inter-organisational levels.
The focus of the second section is on key success factors that are important for enabling knowledge management and realising virtual models of business transformation. Key knowledge management themes addressed in this section relate to organisational transformation; analysis and design of knowledge systems and processes; role of organisational control systems; creating successful communities of practice; role of internal and external employees and customers in creation of organisational knowledge; knowledge acquisition and management;and information quality issues.
From this brief summary, it is apparent that the major emphasis of this book is on knowledge management within and by virtual organisations and teams –it thus takes a particular "slant" on KM. This is no bad thing – it ensures a consistency to the material presented and a thread of continuity throughout.
