What is Knowledge Flow

Knowledge management (KM) is an important factor in organizational competitive advantage (Ichijo & Nonaka, 2007). Unfortunately, traditional KM initiatives frequently fail when they are included in the work processes of organizations (Stewart, 2002). One of the factors responsible for this is that these initiatives are not well aligned to the real knowledge needs of the organization’s knowledge workers. Thus, it is important to seek approaches to help to align KM initiatives to the real work processes of organizations (Maier & Remus, 2002), considering what is important for their knowledge workers (Dalkir, 2005; Wiig, 2004). In this chapter, we describe the knowledge flow identification methodology (KoFI), a methodology, based on process engineering techniques, that has been developed to aid in the study of organizational processes from a knowledge flow perspective. The methodology proposes a set of steps and tasks that can be carried out to analyze knowledge flows in business processes; thus, helping to identify issues such as the knowledge workers’ needs, the knowledge (and its sources) that is principally involved in the processes, the working tools that may (positively or negatively) affect the flow of knowledge in the process, or the problems that may be restricting the good flow of knowledge in the process. To exemplify the usefulness of the KoFI methodology, we provide a brief description of some of the results obtained from the application of the methodology, in real settings, in which it was helpful for various purposes, including: the design of a multiagent-based KM system, the development of a knowledge map for a process, the identification of the manner in which to integrate a tool currently used in an organization as a basis for a KM strategy, and for the development of an organizational knowledge portal.