What is Inter-Organisational Knowledge Management

The necessity for managing knowledge is stressed by wide array of recent publications ranging from information science to strategic management substantiating their proposition with the tremendous changes in the context organisations that are operating today. Although knowledge management (KM) literature and research projects are increasingly extending their attention from intra-organisational to inter-organisational aspects (e.g., Seufert, Back, & van Krogh, 2000; Alpar & Kalmring, 2001; Schmaltz & Hagenhof, 2003 ), the question of how inter-organisational knowledge management can be realised is up to now not sufficiently answered (Carlsson, 2003). That is even more true for virtual enterprises, as the following specific characteristics need to be considered: short-term focus; focus on information and communication technology; decentralised information systems; and distributed ownership. As a solution approach catering for the issues mentioned above, a prototype of a system called “selfmodelling knowledge networks” is introduced. Self-modelling knowledge networks could provide a mechanism that facilitates flexible knowledge retrieval across several nodes in networked and virtual enterprises. Thus, this approach is ideally suited for situations where knowledge resources need to be combined in a flexible way and several levels of the network are comprised.