Integrating knowledge seeking into knowledge management models, frameworks, and strategies

Abstract

Knowledge management (KM) is something that we as humans have practiced for generations by means of sharing stories around the fireplace, passing down recipe books, teaching trade crafts to children and showing young adults how to hunt. This primitive version of KM was not described as an area of development or expertise within organisations until 1995 when Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model revolutionised the world of KM. Since then, many KM researchers have contributed to the field and tried to establish its true foundations. As a result, many KM models and frameworks have emerged leading to a call for the standardisation of KM terminology, and the harmonisation of about 160 existing KM models and frameworks. What has been strikingly overlooked in all these KM models and frameworks is the idea of knowledge seeking as a necessary theoretical component and as a key KM process. Only recently there have been a few attempts to integrate knowledge seeking into KM models and frameworks. With a view to taking this development further, this study achieves two things. First, the study assesses the theoretical status of knowledge seeking in some of the established KM models, frameworks and strategies, and reviews the work of KM researchers who have grappled with the idea of knowledge seeking. Second, the study describes some of the key features of knowledge seeking in a sample of companies. Four companies were selected according to their type and size. They included a small business intelligence consulting company, a branch office of a country-wide IT company, a department within a larger insurance company, and a company that deals with financial software. Using questionnaires and descriptive statistical methods to generate, analyse and interpret the data, the study delineates some of the key features of knowledge seeking in the workplace by asking where people seek knowledge to solve problems, where they seek knowledge under the pressure of time, and where they would prefer to seek knowledge in ideal circumstances. On the basis of the data, the study revises Han Lai and Margaret Graham’s KM life cycle model, which is the latest version of a KM model that integrates knowledge seeking. Additionally, the study adapts Hansen et al’s codification versus personalisation KM strategy. The study therefore contributes to the theoretical aspects of KM by showing that knowledge seeking deserves sustained analysis in KM models and frameworks as a KM process, and it contributes to KM practice by showing the implications of knowledge seeking for KM strategies. Copyright