Knowledge Management Governance: The Road to Continuous Benefits Realization

Investment in knowledge management (KM) programmes is often contentious due to the challenge of meeting the need for continuous and sustainable benefits realization. In KM, the word ‘sustainable’ describes how programmes of strategies to leverage organizational knowledge remain productive over time: that they deliver strategic value to the organization. The focus of this paper falls on the constructs of the governance of KM and on its leadership, in KM strategy devopment and implementation, including risk management, financial controls and transparent evaluation mechanisms for continuous benefits realization. This paper presents a KM governance model and explores its recent validation through six case studies of large, distributed, multinational organizations, and through these introduces the granular constructs of KM governance. Exploration of the impact of KM governance on developing and implementing KM programmes in each case study organization demonstrates that there is a clear nexus between strategic KM governance and benefits realized from those programmes.

Knowledge Management Governance

There are many barriers to the implementation of knowledge management (KM) strategies. These include the lack of time and financial resources allocated to sharing knowledge, a lack of organizational understanding of the philosophy and the benefits of KM, and a lack of skills in KM. However, survey data show that the greatest acknowledged obstacle to the implementation of a KM strategy is the management culture of the organization (Chase, 1997; Zyngier, 2001). These obstacles reveal a problem in the implementation of an organizational KM strategy. The problem lies not in the implementation of a given strategy per se, but in the lack of governance of that strategy.

Knowledge Management Governance

There are many barriers to the implementation of knowledge management (KM) strategies. These include the lack of time and financial resources allocated to sharing knowledge, a lack of organizational understanding of the philosophy and the benefits of KM, and a lack of skills in KM. However, survey data show that the greatest acknowledged obstacle to the implementation of a KM strategy is the management culture of the organization (Chase, 1997; Zyngier, 2001). These obstacles reveal a problem in the implementation of an organizational KM strategy. The problem lies not in the implementation of a given strategy per se, but in the lack of governance of that strategy.