Is commonly used as an accounting term to indicate how well an organization has used its investment in resources. In a knowledge management context, ROI describes the return on both the human and financial capital invested in that strategy. Some measures may include sustainable growth, calculable efficiencies in product development cycles; improved decision-making; better ability initiate and integrate new employees; lower rates of staff turnover reflecting improved employee morale; better ability to retain customers reflecting trust in employees’ expertise
Published in Chapter:
Governance of Knowledge Management
Copyright: © 2011
|Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-931-1.ch034
Abstract
Despite the more than 25 years since Nonaka wrote the Knowledge Creating Company in the Harvard Business Review (1991) there are still many barriers to implementation of knowledge management (KM) strategies. These include a lack of time and financial resources allocated to sharing knowledge, a lack of organizational understanding of the philosophy and the benefits of KM, a lack of skills in KM and difficulties in effectively establishing a return on investment (RIO) in KM. However both case studies and survey data show that greatest acknowledged obstacle to the implementation of a KM strategy is the management culture of the organization (Alavi & Leidner, 1999; DeTienne, Dyer, Hoopes, & Harris, 2004; H. Lee & Choi, 2003; McAdam & Reid, 2001; Murray, 1998; Ruzzier, Sohal, Katna, & Zyngier, 2008) 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.