A Methodology for the Auditing of Technological Knowledge Management

Introduction

Within literature related to Knowledge Management there is a great diversity of models, which can be classified within the following dimensions or approaches: a) knowledge resources (Leonard-Barton, 1995; Sveiby, 1997), b) knowledge activities (Alavi, 1997; Leonard-Barton, 1995; Nonaka, 1994; Szulanski, 1996; Wiig, 1993) and c) factors of influence (Andersen & APQC, 1996; Szulanski, 1996). While the first approach attaches importance to the sources of knowledge themselves and gives as its main purpose the measurement of the value of knowledge for the organisations where it is placed, the second focuses on the possibility of the evolution of knowledge and has as its main objective increases in creativity and innovation in organisations. Finally, the third approach is aimed at the structure of organisations and mainly investigates the adaptation of knowledge to their strategic objectives.

A second way of classifying the proposed approaches and models, complementing the first, is according to their dependence on technology, including the following categories: a) knowledge evaluation, b) knowledge management and c) technological knowledge management. While the first approach is aimed solely at the assessment of the intangible assets of organisations, regardless of whether their sources are people or information systems (Sveiby, 1997), the second focuses on the management processes of said knowledge, which may be independent of technology (e.g. the creation of a training plan) or dependent on it (e.g. creating a document based project management system) (Leonard-Barton, 1995; Nonaka, 1994; Szulanski, 1996; Wiig, 1993), and the third focuses its attention on the management, mainly through processes and computer systems, of the knowledge of organisations (Alavi, 1997; Andersen & APQC, 1996).

According to Holsapple & Joshi (2002), none of the mentioned models covers all of the specified dimensions. On the other hand, it can be seen that the group of models oriented mainly towards technological knowledge management is relatively small.