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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES:
THEORY AND PRACTICE
A study submitted in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Information Management
At
THE UNIVERISTY OF SHEFFIELD
By
CARMINA SINZIANA CIORDAS
100233973
September 2011
ii
Abstract
Background
Knowledge management (KM) became a topic during the mid 1980s, when rather
few publications appeared, and it became more popular in the mid 1990s, when
Nonaka and Takeuchi proposed their famous SECI model regarding explicit and
tacit knowledge and the connections between them (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995),
and organisations started seeing knowledge management as promising for
organisational learning, and ultimately for business.
Aim
The problem would be that authors who propose KM strategies (organised in
frameworks) explain rather briefly (sometimes not at all) how these strategies are
applied within companies, and they generally do not cover advantages and
disadvantages of various strategies. The research aims to explore what the theory on
KM strategies says, and how organisations implement various KM strategies. For
this purpose, a knowledge management framework is developed based on three
existing frameworks - Hansen et al (1999), Earl (2001) and Binney (2001); and the
research aims to explore and explain how the strategies are applied in organisations.
Methods
The research strategy applied is qualitative-deductive, being based on the literature
and existing case studies, and aiming to explore and explain the theory and practice
of KM strategies. The research is based on existing case studies regarding
knowledge management in three organisations – IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard
(HP) – for which the KM strategy is analysed against the framework developed, and
afterwards compared with the KM strategies of the other two companies.
iii
Results
The framework developed based on three rather cited authors – Hansen et al (1999),
Earl (2001) and Binney (2001) – comprises eight various KM strategies. It has been
observed that companies focus on two strategies, and also have additional KM
initiatives from other two strategies. Also, it has been observed that three strategies
from the KM framework are implemented by all companies, to a lesser or greater
extent.
Conclusions
The KM framework developed is generally useful in identifying and analysing
various KM strategies applied by organisations, in this case IBM, Dell, and HP. It is
worth mentioning that these three organisations are similar in the fact that they are
all global businesses, but the framework may be useful in analysing other types of
companies as well.
iv
Acknowledgements
A special thanks and appreciation goes to my supervisor, Dr Ana Cristina
Vasconcelos, for her guidance and support especially with the dissertation, but also
during the course. I would also like to thank the staff at the Information School,
from which I have learnt much throughout the course.
Moreover, I would like to thank my mother, Veronica, and brother, Dragos, for their
financial and moral support throughout the course.
v
Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………..ii
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………..…….……iv
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………..….…...v
Tables and Figures…………………………………………………………….......vii
Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………..1
1.1 Statement of the importance of the subject…………………………………1
1.2 Mention of very recent research…………………………………………….2
1.3 Justification of dealing with the subject…………………………………….2
1.4 The writer’s objectives……………………………………………………...3
1.5 A statement of the scope of the project……………………………………..4
1.6 The dissertation plan………………………………………………………..4
Chapter 2: Literature review………………………………………………………..6
2.1. Information and Knowledge………………………………………………..6
2.2. Information and Knowledge Management…………………………………9
2.3. Description of the KM frameworks of Hansen, Earl, and Binney…………11
2.4. A review of Begona Lloria’s article on KM frameworks………………….16
2.5. Analytical KM framework based on Hansen-Earl-Binney………………...19
Chapter 3: Research methodology………..………………………………………..28
3.1 Description of the qualitative approach……………………………………28
3.2 Research strategy…………………………………………………………..31
3.3 Data analysis……………………………………………………………….33
3.4 Ethical aspects……………………………..……………………………….36
Chapter 4: Case Studies – Discussion and Analysis………………………..……...37
4.1. Knowledge Management at IBM …………………………….……………….37
vi
4.1.1 Review of Case Study 1: “Knowledge Management Initiatives at IBM”
(Gupta et al, 2009)…………………………………………………………………37
4.1.2 Commercial-Asset KM…………………………………………………….42
4.1.3. Organizational-Innovation KM………………………..…………………...45
4.1.4. Discussion and Conclusions……….……………………………………….46
4.2. Knowledge Management at Dell……………………………….……………...49
4.2.1. Review of Case Study 2: “DELL’s Direct Model: Everything to do with
Information” (Marchand, D.; Chung, R.; Kettinger, W., 2003)…………...………49
4.2.2. Analytical KM……………………………………………………………..53
4.2.3. Strategic-Developmental KM……………………………………………...55
4.2.4. Discussion and Conclusions………………………………………………..57
4.3. Knowledge Management at HP……………………………………………….59
4.3.1. Review of Case Study 3: “Creating and Spreading New Knowledge at
Hewlett-Packard” (Cole and Lee, 2004)……………………………………………59
4.3.2. Organizational-Innovation KM…………………………..………………...64
4.3.3. Engineering-Process KM…………………………………………………..67
4.3.4. Discussion and Conclusions………………………………………………..69
4.4. Discussion: Cross-comparison of the ECCH case studies…………………….70
Chapter 5: Conclusions…………………………………………………………….77
5.1. Discussion of Objectives…………………………………………………...77
5.2. Limitations of this Research……………………………………………..…79
5.3 Recommendations for Further Research…………………………………...79
Bibliography and References………………………………………………………80
APPENDIX 1: IBM – KM Initiatives – Related Dates……………………………86
APPENDIX 2: Dell – KM Initiatives – Related Dates……………………………87
APPENDIX 3: Hewlett-Packard – KM Initiatives – Related Dates………………88
APPENDIX 4: KM Analytical Framework – Detailed Description………………89
vii
Tables and Figures
Table 1. The analytical framework of the KM approaches of Hansen-Earl-Binney.20
Table 2. KM framework based on Hansen-Earl-Binney……….………………..…25
Table 3. Description of the research methodology……………………..………..…32
Table 4. KM and IBM – Dell – HP…………………………………..…………….70
Figure 1. Explicit and tacit knowledge inside the organisation (Source: Davidson,
2010)………………………………………………………………………………....8
Figure 2. The SECI model (Source: Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)……………....….9
Figure 3. Thematic analysis steps…………………………………………………..35
Figure 4. KM at IBM (Hansen-Earl-Binney)…………….……………………........41
Figure 5. KM at IBM……………………………………………………………….48
Figure 6. KM at Dell (Hansen-Earl-Binney)……………………………………….52
Figure 7. KM at Dell………………………………………………………………..58
Figure 8. KM at HP (Hansen-Earl-Binney)……………………………….………..63
Figure 9. HP’s model for KM (Source: A Knowledge Street Report, 2006)……….66
Figure 10. KM at Hewlett-Packard (HP)…………………………………………...69
1
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Statement of the importance of the subject
The literature on knowledge management (KM) is largely theoretical, as Begona
Lloria (2008) specifies, and it is unclear in what circumstances and how it can help
an organisation. The opinions are split among authors who consider it a temporary
craze, like Wilson (2002), and authors who describe KM success stories, like Biren
(2000). Moreover, there are authors who propose strategies for applying KM in a
company, like Hansen et al (1999) and Earl (2001), but mention vaguely what the
advantages might be, and do not mention what the costs and drawbacks might be.
The importance of correct knowledge management (KM) is perhaps best
exemplified by Bohmer et al (2010), who describe how it affected the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where communication failures
between engineers and management lead to the disaster of the Columbia space
shuttle, even after a similar situation occurred several years before, with the
Challenger tragedy; and Biren (2000), who describes the Xerox success story with
developing the right KM approach.
This research aims to make a connection between academic KM (theory) and
business KM (practice, application) by analysing the approaches of three
organisations – IBM, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell – to develop a theme of possible
benefits and drawbacks, with respect to employees and the IT involved in adopting a
specific KM approach, and how they differ in practice from the theoretical
descriptions given by the authors of the frameworks.
2
1.2 Mention of very recent research
There might not be any similar recent research, meaning which maps applied KM
strategies with theoretical ones. For example, Gupta et al (2009) describe at length
KM at IBM without reference to any framework. Another example is the case study
by Bohmer et al (2010), who discusses how KM could have helped NASA, but does
not mention a specific KM approach. Begonna Lloria (2008) compares seven KM
frameworks, including that of Earl (2001) which is applied in this research, and
makes a statement regarding the difference between academic KM (theoretical) and
business KM (applied), but does not discuss any strategies within companies.
The papers on KM by Earl (2001) and Binney (2001) are arguably among the most
cited in the literature on KM, and they also include practical strategies in business,
as follows: Earl proposes a six-step plan for developing a KM strategy specific to
the company’s business needs, while Binney states that the “KM spectrum” was
developed to analyse existing KM strategies rather than to plan one.
1.3 Justification of dealing with the subject
KM is arguably an interesting field related to both the less technical side of
information technology (IT) and to management, and has been shown by several
case studies to bring benefits to a company by completing the management agenda.
It is arguably interesting to see to what extent and in what ways KM has practical
applications in international businesses, as all companies chosen for this research are
international, large companies.
3
1.4 The writer’s objectives
The research aims to answer the following questions:
- What does the theory on KM strategies say?
- Which recent studies have been conducted in this area and what are their
conclusions?
- How do organisations implement these KM strategies?
- What are the similarities (e.g. common problems) and differences between
the case studies? - this being the main research aim, to investigate advantages and
disadvantages of various applied KM strategies, and what similarities might be
between them;
- What are the similarities and differences between theory and practice? -
secondary research aim.
The research objectives are: to explore the theory on KM strategies; to explore how
organisations put these strategies into practice; to choose contrasting case studies to
identify strengths and weaknesses of the KM strategies proposed by Hansen et. al
(1999), Earl (2001) and Binney (2001); to identify similarities and differences; and
to make recommendations. For the third, fourth, and fifth research questions there
will be three case studies used, purchased from the European Case-study Clearing
House (ECCH) official website (http://www.ecch.com/).
The theoretical framework that this research relies on consists on developing a KM
framework from analysing the taxonomies by Hansen (1999), Earl (2001) and
Binney (2001), described and compared in Chapter 2. Another aim is to develop
themes regarding the advantages and disadvantages of specific KM strategies, based
on analysing the strategies adopted by IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard (HP).
4
1.5 A statement of the scope of the project
This project aims to establish what may be the differences between KM theory and
practice, and what may be the advantages and disadvantages of adopting specific
KM strategies, by comparing different KM initiatives and their results. The KM
approaches of IBM, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Dell, are analyzed with respect to
the KM framework developed based on Hansen et al (1999), Earl (2001), and
Binney (2001), to identify themes as follows: what each company does that is not
mentioned in the KM framework, what is mentioned in the framework and the
company does not do, what KM initiatives did the company adopt and what were
their results, and what means of codifying knowledge does the company use. The
case studies involve KM in “large” organisations from the computer and information
technology (IT) industry; there is such thing as KM in small and medium enterprises
(SME), but this does not make the subject of this paper.
1.6 The dissertation plan
The dissertation is structured in five chapters, as follows:
� Chapter 1, (this chapter) the introduction: sets out the rationale for this study
and outlines its objectives and scope.
� Chapter 2, the literature review: defines and describes information and
knowledge, and information management (IM) and knowledge management,
by mentioning the differences and relationships between them. Afterwards,
the KM frameworks by Hansen et al (1999), Earl (2001), and Binney (2001),
are described and the relationships between them are discussed and analyzed,
finally developing a KM framework based on them, which is the support of
this research.
� Chapter 3, the research methodology: presents a description of the
qualitative-deductive approach used and a discussion on why it is better to
use this research approach rather than others.
5
� Chapter 4, the case studies: is composed of the descriptions and analysis of
the KM approaches applied by IBM, HP, and Dell, with respect to the
analytical KM framework developed in Chapter 2.
� Chapter 5, discussion and conclusions: presents the findings of this research
and how they answer the research questions.
6
Chapter 2: Literature review
2.1. Information and Knowledge
Knowledge management is concerned with the exploration and exploitation of both
explicit and tacit knowledge, therefore a good place to start is specifying the
difference between the two types of knowledge.
Bouthillier and Shearer (2002) define tacit knowledge as “action-based, entrained
in practice, and therefore cannot be easily explained or described, but is considered
to be the fundamental type of knowledge on which organizational knowledge is
built”, and explicit knowledge as “knowledge that can be codified and therefore
more easily communicated and shared”.
In other words, explicit knowledge (or information, codified knowledge), is
articulated knowledge that can be explained or described precisely in words, written
as documents or data entries in a database, or explained to a computer (e.g.
programming algorithms). For example, students rely on lectures, articles and books,
which qualify as explicit knowledge, and might constitute the principal means
through which people get formal education. On the other hand, tacit knowledge is
related to ‘learning by doing’ and resides in personal experience, skills, values,
instinct, and so on, which combined would form a person’s informal education.
Tacit knowledge is shared through training sessions, or through stories like in the
case of the photocopier machines’ technicians who, through socialization unrelated
to their job description, shared valuable tips for fixing the machines (Orr, 1996).
Bouthillier and Shearer (2002) mention that dictionaries define “data as factual
information (measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion,
or calculation; information as the communication or reception of knowledge or
intelligence; knowledge as the condition of knowing something gained through
experience or the condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning, and
intelligence as the ability to understand and to apply knowledge”. In other words,
7
there is a direct relationship between data, information, and knowledge, which could
be described as follows: information is structured and meaningful data, and
knowledge is information with application.
In an organisation, it can be argued that “formal policies, systems and practices”
constitute the organisation’s explicit knowledge, expected to be known and followed
by all employees; and “informal practices, norms, and symbolic actions” coupled
with employees’ “underlying beliefs, values, and attitudes” constitute the
organisation’s tacit knowledge (Davidson, 2010). If explicit knowledge can be
embedded in documents, databases, and repositories, tacit knowledge is embedded
in organisational procedures, methods, and routines, such as the classic ‘meeting at
the water cooler’, or other organisational official or unofficial routines and traditions
where employees are believed to share and create work-related knowledge. For
example, if an employee leaves the organisation, his knowledge leaves with him and
may be difficult, or even impossible, to replace; KM offers a solution to this
problem by advising organisations to treat people as knowledge assets, and
proposing means of sharing or codifying organisational knowledge that resides in
employees (tacit knowledge).
Figure 1 presents the split between explicit and tacit knowledge within an
organisation, as it may be considered that explicit knowledge is ‘the tip of the
iceberg’ inside a company.
8
Figure 1. Explicit and tacit knowledge inside the organisation (Source:
Davidson, 2010)
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) described in their famous Socialization-
Externalization-Combination-Internalization (SECI) model how inside the
organisation knowledge is transformed from tacit to explicit, and vice-versa, through
a spiralling process of four sub-processes aimed to enable knowledge creation and
use, as follows: tacit knowledge is shared and created through the process of
“socialization”, “externalization” involves the articulation of tacit knowledge to
make it explicit, “combination” implies that the articulated knowledge gained from
externalization is combined to create new explicit knowledge, and finally
“internalization” implies that the gained explicit knowledge is translated to new
experience and skill that the employee brings to the organisational knowledge.
Figure 2 presents Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995,
p. 284).
9
Figure 2. The SECI model (Source: Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)
2.2. Information and Knowledge Management
Wilson (1997) defines information management (IM) as the “application of
management principles to the acquisition, organization, control, dissemination and
use of information relevant to the effective operation of organizations of all kinds”,
in other words, the application of management methods to collect, communicate and
use information that is crucial for the managers to make good (and fast) business
decisions.
Little et al define knowledge management (KM), with respect to the case study of
Xerox (Biren, 2000), as the “discipline of creating a thriving work and learning
environment that fosters the continuous creation, aggregation, use and re-use of
both organizational and personal knowledge in the pursuit of new business value”
(Little et al, 2002, p. 9), that is for knowledge to be created and communicated, it is
recommended to have an organisational culture which encourages employees to
communicate with one another, and even form groups, or ‘communities of interest’,
of individuals with similar job roles and interests.
Terra and Angeloni (2002) mention that: “A narrow definition of KM is usually
associated with the deployment of information management systems, while broad
definitions are usually associated with the softer side of management such as
leadership style, organizational culture, rewards and recognition programs, etc.”. It
can be considered that KM is an outgrowth of IM, because both aim to collect and
10
use information, but if IM focuses more on knowledge codification and the use IM
systems, KM also focuses on treating employees as valuable ‘knowledge assets’.
In the past few decades there have been many studies, mostly theoretical, about
knowledge management (Begona, 2008) and an explanation for this is given by
Little et al. (2002, p. 4) who identified six drivers that propelled knowledge “to the
top of the management agenda in the 1990s”:
- “wealth being demonstrably and increasingly generated from knowledge and
intangible assets;
- the rediscovery that people are the locus of much organizational knowledge;
- accelerating change in markets, competition, and technology, making
continuous learning essential;
- the recognition that innovation is key to competitiveness, and depends on
knowledge creation and application;
- the growing importance of cross-boundary knowledge transactions;
- technology limits and potentials: the limits of information systems and the
potentials of communications and knowledge technologies.”
Begona (2008) identified three approaches to knowledge management - measuring
knowledge, managing knowledge and creating knowledge – which are applied in
European, American and Japanese companies respectively, but more on this later.
11
2.3. Description of the KM frameworks of Hansen, Earl, and
Binney
Hansen et al (1999) studied knowledge management especially, but not exclusively,
in consulting firms (they were the first to invest in knowledge management because
knowledge is their main asset) and identified two strategies: codification and
personalization, which should be chosen with respect to the company’s competitive
strategy. Hansen defines the competitive strategy as whether the consulting firm
creates an asset and uses it several times with minor or no modifications, that is it
relies on reuse economics, or the firm offers unique solutions that meet their
customer’s unique needs, in other words expert economics.
Hansen et al (1999) say that if a company’s economic model is based on reuse
economics, the codification strategy makes more sense. Reuse economics means that
the company deals with similar problems over and over, so that the same solution
can work every time if tweaked and improved before being offered to the customers.
Because the solution already exists and is much easier to adapt it than it would be to
re-build it from scratch, the re-use is at a very low cost, tweaks take little time and it
pays to work on and dedicate time to converting the tacit knowledge into explicit
and documenting it, thus making it easier to share between and within teams with a
large number of employees. When using the codification strategy, the firms “invest
heavily in IT”, hire people who excel at implementing existing solutions (not
inventing new ones) and “reward people for using and contributing to document
databases”.
On the other hand, also according to Hansen et al (1999), companies using expert
economics are advised to adopt a personalization strategy. These companies take on
customers with unique problems or requests and spend a lot of time and work on
developing very customized solutions each time. It does not pay to work on
codifying a solution that you know (from experience) will never prove useful again,
so most of the knowledge created, shared and used here remains tacit. The teams in
this case are small, because sharing tacit knowledge can only be done through direct
12
face-to-face interactions and that is much more difficult to achieve with large teams.
Because the solution offered is so personalized and unique, the company turns a
profit by charging high fees to the customer. When relying on a personalization KM
strategy, firms “invest moderately in IT”, recruit people who are very creative and
have excellent social skills and “reward people for directly sharing knowledge with
others”.
Furthermore, Hansen et al. (1999) observed that companies which had a successful
knowledge managed strategy applied an 80-20 rule between the codification and
personalization KM strategies, meaning relying heavily on one strategy and using
the other one supportively. The equally dangerous mistakes companies can make are:
“emphasizing the wrong strategy or trying to pursue both at the same time can, as
some consulting firms have found, quickly undermine a business”. Hansen also
proposes three basic questions to be answered before choosing what KM strategy to
follow, codification or personalization, which are: “Do you offer standardized or
customized products? (…) Do you have a mature or innovative product? (…) Do
your people rely on explicit or tacit knowledge to solve problems?”
Earl (2001) published a much more complex KM taxonomy, which relies on
business strategy and assumes the existence of seven schools of knowledge
management where knowledge is created, shared and used in different ways, and
places these schools under three labels. The systems, cartographic and engineering
schools are labelled “technocratic” because of their emphasis on information or
management technologies, the commercial school is labelled “economic”, due to its
commercial orientation, and the organizational, spatial and strategic schools fall
under the “behavioural” category. Earl (2001) says that “the schools are not
mutually exclusive. Indeed two or three of them sometimes have been observed in
the same organization. Furthermore, there may be other schools that my research
has not encountered.”
Earl (2001) thoroughly describes and exemplifies the seven schools with respect to
their focus, aim, unit, critical success factors, principal IT contribution and
“philosophy”.
13
• The systems school works on the principle of “codifying experience and
expertise for other to access using their own judgement”, relies heavily on
IT and encourages people to provide content to the company’s knowledge-
based systems, a lot like in the case of Hansen’s codification strategy.
• The cartographic school uses the idea that organizational knowledge resides
within the company’s employees, who are profiled according to their known
explicit and tacit knowledge (experience and expertise) and connected via
intranets and extranets. IT is used here to connect people and help them find
each other and knowledge sharing is done a lot through face-to-face
interactions, similarly to Hansen’s personalization strategy.
• The engineering school relies on most improved knowledge flows and
efficient knowledge distribution among employees by using shared databases,
in order to assure that every employee has the knowledge he/she requires to
do his/her job.
• The commercial school is concerned with the protection and application of
intellectual and knowledge assets – such as patents, copyright, trademarks
and know-how - to turn a profit, being the school “most concerned with
exploitation of knowledge and least concerned with exploration”.
• The organizational school focuses on communities of people who are pushed
by a “tradition of sociability and networking” to directly share tacit and
explicit knowledge within the community as well as with other communities.
• The spatial school implies that the company’s building has a design that
causes employees from different departments to meet a lot, socialize and thus
exchange knowledge, it is also called the “social” school.
• The strategic school relies on raising consciousness of the role of knowledge
management in the company, through developing “conceptual models to
articulate and explain the purpose and the character of intellectual capital”
and “complementary knowledge management initiatives, to develop human
competences as well as capture and share learning and know-how”.
14
Earl’s (2001) taxonomy is based on identifying which knowledge management
school or schools a company belongs to, and applying the appropriate knowledge
management strategy. Earl has developed five questions aimed to help the company
formulate a knowledge management strategy, based on the seven schools of
knowledge management – systems, cartographic, engineering, commercial,
organizational, spatial and strategic. Earl’s five questions are, in order: 1. What is
the knowledge business vision? 2. What is the business performance gap? 3. How
could knowledge make a difference? 4. What are the alternative knowledge
management initiatives? and 5. What is the degree of fit and feasibility? The first
question is influenced by question 3 and influences question 4. This formulation of a
strategy relies on the seven schools of KM for answering questions 4 and 5.
Begona (2008) associates Earl’s (2001) technocratic schools with knowledge
management in American firms, the behavioural schools with knowledge
management in Japanese firms (aka creating knowledge) and the economic school
with knowledge management in European firms (aka measuring knowledge).
A third popular taxonomy was proposed by Binney (2001), who (probably) coined
the term “KM spectrum” and whose taxonomy is more focused on understanding
the existing and currently used approaches to knowledge management, rather than
on developing a KM strategy. According to Binney, knowledge management can be
transactional, analytical, asset management, process-based, developmental or
innovation and creation, depending on the knowledge management applications used
in one given company and their enabling technologies. There are technologies used
(almost) equally in all the six elements of the KM spectrum, and these are portals,
internet, intranets and extranets, otherwise both KM applications and enabling
technologies vary without overlapping from one element of the spectrum to the other.
Explicit knowledge is easy to codify efficiently and thus be turned into information,
while tacit knowledge is very difficult (or impossible) to codify. Binney observed,
among others, that the type of knowledge being created, shared and used (mostly,
not exclusively) moves on the KM spectrum from explicit for transactional KM to
tacit for innovation and creation KM.
15
To briefly describe Binney’s (2001) KM spectrum:
• transactional KM relies heavily and the most on information and
management technologies, and uses technologies like expert systems,
cognitive technologies, semantic networks etc.;
• analytical KM relies on intelligent business scenarios and uses technologies
like web crawlers, relational and object DBMS, neural computing etc.;
• asset management KM deals with capitalizing knowledge and intellectual
assets and uses technologies like document management tools, search
engines, library systems and knowledge maps;
• process-based KM focuses on codifying and improving the company’s
“work-practices, procedures or methodology”, and uses technologies like
workflow management and process modelling tools;
• developmental KM focuses on “investing in human capital”, that is teaching
and training the employees, and uses enabling technologies like computer-
based training and online training;
• innovation/creation KM focuses on increasing employee direct interaction
and socialization within (as well as among) communities, and for this
purpose uses technologies like e-mail, chat rooms, video conferencing, voice
mail etc.
16
2.4. A review of Begona Lloria’s article on KM frameworks
The article by Begona Lloria (2008) is divided into three sections: one defining
“knowledge management”, the second listing and describing several knowledge
management approaches, and the last comparing the approaches from the second
section with respect to a descriptive-to-normative continuum proposed by the author.
In the first part, Begona Lloria (2008) argues that there are numerous published
articles on the topic of ‘knowledge management’ both from an academic and a
business perspective, this article being centred around the latter. The work is mostly
theoretical and there is no agreed classification of knowledge management
approaches, as I found in other articles on the topic.
Begona Lloria (2008) begins by listing ten definitions from various authors, the last
one describing it as a “developing area within both business practice and research”
that is supposed to deal with “the development and “maintenance” of synergistic
combinations of people, organisational systems and IT support”. Then, she argues
that knowledge management identifies with research as well as business, in business
it is more than information management and IT, with all its processes being
concerned with the “asset of knowledge” and the means of turning it from a human
asset to a business one. (p. 79)
The second part summarises the knowledge management ideas of seven chosen
authors: Andreu and Sieber (1999), McAdam and McCreedy (1999), Alvesson and
Karreman (2001), Takeuchi (2001), Earl (2001), Swan and Scarbrough (2001), and
Moreno-Luzon et al. (2001), which are the most cited in the literature on the topic.
She discussed the KM approach by Andreu and Sieber (1999), who highlight three
types of knowledge management: one focused on information or explicit knowledge,
the second on IT and heavily related to data mining, and the third on the culture of
the company. All three are attempts to use knowledge for “competitive advantage”.
Another study mentioned is by McAdam and McCreedy (1999), who classify
knowledge management as belonging to the old/mechanistic paradigm, the
17
new/organic paradigm, or being a little bit of both. The mechanistic/old way
contains “intellectual capital models”, which imply treating knowledge as an asset
and that the control of the organization is completely in the hands of management.
The organic/new way contains “socially constructed models”, which imply
empowering the employee and encouraging communication with management and
among employees, and socialisation. Furthermore, there are the models concerned
with categorising knowledge, these being in-between the old and new paradigms
because they encourage socialization to communicate tacit knowledge, but otherwise
implement a more mechanistic approach.
Begona also evaluated the approach by Alvesson and Karreman (2001), who
highlight four KM approaches. Firstly, the “extended libraries” KM use – as the
authors put it – techno-structural interaction and coordination management, they rely
heavily on IT to exchange information. Secondly, community KM involves social
interaction and coordination management, tacit knowledge is considered important
to communicate within and among communities, with trust being an important factor.
Thirdly, “normative control” KM imply social interaction and management control
and “prescribed interpretations”. Lastly, “enacted blueprints” KM is characterized
by techno-structural interaction, control management, and codifying individual
knowledge to transform it into organizational knowledge and build “templates for
action”.
The next article discussed is by Takeuchi (2001), who identified the differences
between how knowledge is used in Europe, the USA, and Japan. The observation
was that European companies measure knowledge as an asset, being concerned with
intellectual capital, human and structural capital. On the other hand, American
companies manage knowledge, especially knowledge that can be codified and
managed with the use of IT. In Japanese companies, there is an emphasis on creating
knowledge by converting individual and group knowledge into new organizational
knowledge, and already existing knowledge is managed. Zhu (2004) brings a fourth
kind, the Chinese KM, which focuses on both people and IT, but is difficult to
compare with the other three.
18
The next article discussed is by Swan and Scarbrough (2001) who differentiate
between KM based on explicit knowledge and KM based on the management of
tacit knowledge.
The next article discussed is by Moreno-Luzon et al. (2001) who has an approach
quite different from the other six, describing two streams: “knowledge-based theory
of the firm” and “knowledge management”.
Finally, in the third section, Begona Lloria (2008) compares and places them on a
descriptive-to-normative spectrum, because some authors tend to describe their
classification of knowledge management approaches and others also offer a
taxonomy to help the company choose the appropriate knowledge management
strategy.
Begona Lloria (2008) considers the approaches by Takeuchi (2001), Moreno-Luzon
et al. (2001), and McAdam and McCreedy (1999) to be the most important. The
“knowledge based theory of the firm” and European KM models are placed on the
descriptive-end of the continuum, KM models and American KM models are placed
on the normative end of the spectrum, and Japanese KM models are placed in the
middle (Begona Lloria, 2008, p. 87). Perhaps a second conclusion of this article
(Begona Lloria, 2008) is that Earl’s (2001) framework is an extension of Takeuchi’s
(2001) KM models classification, as follows: “The technocratic school is similar in
the way it manages knowledge in American firms; the behavioural school has
numerous connections with the perspective of Japanese firms, while the economic
school is identified with European firms” (Begona Lloria, 2008, p. 84).
19
2.5. Analytical KM framework based on Hansen-Earl-Binney
Hansen et. al (1999) propose the most simple classification of approaches to
knowledge management, differencing between focus on explicit knowledge and
focus on tacit knowledge. The classification is clearly presented in a table (Hansen
et. al, 1999, p. 3) and the authors offer examples for each KM strategy. A second
contribution from Hansen et. al (1999) is the recommendation to apply a 80-20 split
between the two KM strategies: codification and personalisation.
Earl (2001) extends the approach by Hansen et. al (1999), by proposing seven
schools of knowledge management with a couple of example companies for each. It
can be argued that the systems school identifies with the codification strategy, the
other two technocratic schools and the economic school can have either a
codification or personalisation strategy, and the behavioural schools identify with
the personalization strategy. A second contribution by Earl (2001) is a proposed
taxonomy to help companies identify which school (or schools) they belong to and
how to implement the right knowledge management approach for them.
Begona Lloria (2008, p. 84) proposes that Earl (2001) also extends the KM
approaches identified by Takeuchi (2001), as follows: “The technocratic school is
similar in the way it manages knowledge in American firms; the behavioural school
has numerous connections with the perspective of Japanese firms, while the
economic school is identified with European firms”.
As opposed to the other three, Binney (2001), who identifies six types of KM,
focuses almost exclusively on the technologies used by each KM approach, rather
than on the characteristics of the business practice that a company using a certain
one has. Binney (2001) does not offer examples for the KM approaches described.
Table 1 presents a proposed association of the KM frameworks described above.
20
Table 1. The analytical framework of the KM approaches of Hansen – Earl -
Binney
Earl’s systems school and Binney’s transactional KM can be considered similar
because they are both described by their authors as relying heavily on working with
and codifying explicit knowledge. Earl’s engineering (process) school and Binney’s
process KM can be considered similar because they both focus on business
processes to facilitate knowledge sharing. Earl’s commercial school and Binney’s
asset management KM can be considered similar because they both focus on the
exploitation of knowledge assets. Earl’s organizational school and Binney’s
innovation and creation KM can be considered similar because they both focus on
investing in employees, encouraging and enabling the formation of communities of
interest (or networks), which are then supposed to collaborate in creating and
sharing knowledge. Earl’s spatial school and Binney’s innovation and creation KM
21
can be considered similar because they both focus on creating an environment that
encourages teamwork and the exchange of knowledge.
Since Earl’s systems school has a “philosophy” of codification, it can be considered
as being related to Hansen’s codification strategy. Because Earl’s “technocratic”
schools are described by the author as being “based on information or management
technologies”, and Earl’s “economic” school has an economy of reuse – specifically,
the reuse of knowledge assets, the three schools of KM encompassed under these
labels (exception, the systems school) can be considered as corresponding with
Hansen’s codification strategy, which is characterized by reuse economics and
heavily using IT. But, they can also correspond with a personalisation strategy, as
for example, Earl gives Bain & Co as an example of the cartographic school, and
Hewlett-Packard (HP) as an example of the engineering school, both these
companies relying mostly on a personalisation strategy. Also, Binney states that
“asset management and process-based KM systems are concerned with the
codification of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and making this available to
be leveraged by others in the organisation”, as opposed to the other types of KM
which deal with either explicit or tacit knowledge (Binney, 2001, p. 39; Earl, 2001,
p. 217-218; Hansen et al, 1999, p. 3). Earl’s “behavioral” schools can be considered
as corresponding with Hansen’s personalization strategy because of the common
focus on encouraging the behaviour of collaboration and sharing tacit knowledge
between employees, enabling these through networks, communication tools and
incentives like rewards (Earl, 2001; Hansen et al, 1999).
Hansen’s codification and personalization strategies can be considered the broad
different categories that include Earl’s seven schools of KM and Binney’s six types
of KM, as presented above in Table 1.
Earl and Binney described their KM taxonomies differently, perhaps the most
important difference being that Earl states the “critical success factors” for each
KM school, while Binney offers a comprehensive list of technologies associated
with each type of KM, as presented in Appendix 4.
Earl’s systems school of KM is the most technical out of the seven schools, being
described as dealing with codified knowledge. Binney’s transactional KM heavily
22
relies on information systems (IS), and involves the access and presentation of
computerized knowledge transactions, which implies that the knowledge used is
codified and distributed. As opposed to Binney, Earl mentions “critical success
factors” for all his schools of KM, and for the systems-transactional KM, these are
“content validation” and “incentives to provide content”, both activities being the
responsibilities of the IS users.
Binney’s analytical KM has similarities with both Earl’s systems and engineering
schools.
On the one hand, Earl’s engineering school and Binney’s analytical KM both make
use of databases, as follows: in Earl’s engineering school of KM the “principal IT
contribution” is “shared databases”, and in the case of Binney’s analytical KM
“relational and object DBMS” are used as “enabling technologies” (Earl, 2001, p.
217; Binney, 2001, p. 38). Analytical KM is concerned with codifying information
to analyze it and create new information from it, or as Binney mentions: “provides
interpretations of, or creates new knowledge from, vast amounts of disparate
sources of material (…) to derive trends and patterns (…) and turning data into
information” (Binney, 2001, p. 35); this could be considered as the ‘combination’
process of the SECI model (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995, p. 284) because new
codified knowledge is obtained from stored (existent) codified knowledge probably
using intelligent algorithms. Earl’s engineering (or process) school is described as
one where “both knowledge (expertise, experience, and learning) and information
(intelligence, feedback, and data analyses) are provided by systems and intranets”
to employees (Earl, 2001, p. 222).
On the other hand, Binney’s analytical KM relies on technology and knowledge
codification arguably as much as Earl’s system school, Binney portraits analytical
KM as having a technologist (rather than management-organisational) character and
relying on codified knowledge (Binney, 2001, p. 41), similarly with the systems
school, and Binney emphasises strongly that the data stored in the information
systems (IS) is analysed by the system (rather than people). For these reasons,
Binney’s analytical KM has more in common with Earl’s systems school than with
the engineering school. It is worth mentioning that the similarities between the
23
engineering school and Binney’s process-based KM are arguably considerably
stronger; same goes for Earl’s systems school and Binney’s transactional KM.
Earl’s cartographic school of KM could be considered to correspond with Binney’s
asset management KM because of the common use of knowledge maps. However,
asset management KM has more commonalities with Earl’s commercial school of
KM, because of the strong emphasis on knowledge assets, which they both exhibit.
The success factors of the cartographic school are “culture/incentives to share
knowledge” and “networks to connect people”, the first could be considered as both
encouraging communication and cooperation among employees and sharing codified
knowledge assets, and the second one refers to connecting people who are the
organisation’s intellectual property (IP) through intranets.
Earl’s engineering school of KM involves the enabling and exploitation of
“knowledge flows” to ensure that employees have the right knowledge for their job
requirements, and the IT used for this purpose are databases allocated across the
company. The success factors of this school are “knowledge learning” and
“information unrestricted distribution”, the first one being the aim of analytical KM
systems. Binney’s process-based KM is described by its author as an evolution of
business-process re-engineering (BPR) on the one hand, and quality management on
the other hand; and Earl states that the engineering/process school developed from
BPR. On this note, Binney’s KM applications can be divided in those corresponding
with BPR, and those corresponding with quality management, as follows: Total
Quality Management (TQM), benchmarking, and best practices would be included
under quality management; and “process improvement”, “process automation”,
“lessons learned”, and methodology would be included under BPR.
Earl’s commercial school of KM is concerned with gathering and using “knowledge
assets”, and its success factors are “specialist teams” and “institutionalized
process”. Binney also includes knowledge maps under this type of KM, but Earl
reserved this for another school of KM, specifically the cartographic school. An
explanation for this might be that the two authors have different views regarding
intellectual capital (IC) or property (IP), as follows: while Earl considers intellectual
property to be “patents, trademarks, copyrights, and know-how”, Binney also
24
includes employees as intellectual capital (IC), considering that “Intellectual capital
= Structural capital + Human capital”, under the type of KM dealing with this
(Earl, 2001, p. 222-223; Binney, 2001, p. 36, 40).
Earl’s organizational school of KM is characterized by communities, networks and
groupware, and its success factors are “sociable culture” and “knowledge
intermediaries”, that is organisational culture is used as a basis for encouraging
employees to create communities where knowledge is created and shared. Earl’s
spatial school of KM is rather similar, except it focuses more on knowledge sharing
(KS) than on creation, and its success factor is “design for purpose encouragement”,
meaning that the physical layout of the company building is in such a way as to
enhance employee interaction, leading to knowledge exchange through ‘small talk’.
It can be argued that both these schools correspond with Binney’s innovation and
creation KM, but the organizational school is arguably more similar with innovation
and creation KM than the spatial school. Both authors mention communities,
collaboration, networking and groupware, as being used in the organizational school
and innovation and creation KM, respectively. Binney states that innovation and
creation KM implies creating an environment that enables collaboration and
knowledge creation, so that ‘environment’ could refer to organisational culture, or
the company’s spatial layout, or both; and on this basis it could be considered to
correspond with Earl’s spatial school of KM.
Earl’s strategic school of KM focuses on manipulating employees’ mindsets, that is
changing people’s attitude towards the idea of treating knowledge as an asset,
developing people’s and thus the company’s “knowledge capabilities”, and has as
success factors “rhetoric artifacts”. Binney’s developmental KM is characterized by
enhancing employees’ “knowledge capabilities” through training sessions, and also
developing “collaborative skills” which implies changing the attitude towards
sharing knowledge, but he appears to focus more on training competencies and skills,
while Earl focuses more on changing people’s attitude.
25
Table 2. KM framework based on Hansen – Earl – Binney
.
Table 2 presents the proposed eight KM approaches based on combining the KM
frameworks discussed above. Because the cartographic and spatial schools have
rather little in common with asset management KM and innovation and creation KM,
respectively, they are left unconnected. Those associated with Hansen’s codification
strategy are those described by Earl as having an arguably significant IT
contribution and relying on codification, and which Binney presents as using
technologies that store and process information; when knowledge is codified by
being written in documents or databases, there are usually search engines to support
information availability. The KM approaches associated with Hansen’s
personalization strategy are those described by Earl as having little IT contribution,
and which Binney presents as using technologies that enable communication and
training. Earl considers the engineering school of KM as one focusing on technology,
while Binney considers process-based KM as one focusing on tacit knowledge and
organizational culture. Also the commercial school and asset-management KM are
placed in-between codification-based KM and tacit-knowledge based KM in both
Earl’s and Binney’s frameworks. Because these should be taken into account, it can
be argued that the cartographic, engineering-process and commercial-asset KM can
26
be used either with a strategy of codification, or with personalization, depending on
how the company implements the approach.
All KM approaches included in the developed framework value both the use of IT
and recognizing that organisational knowledge resides within its employees as
‘knowledge assets’, but in different ways, as follows:
� Systems-Transactional KM is the approach most concerned with codifying
knowledge by writing it in documents and databases, and making it widely
accessible for employees to use it; it predominantly applies a strategy of
codification;
� Cartographic KM is concerned with recording employee profiles which
include what knowledge is held by each, and creating an organisation-wide
base accessible to all employees, so that each can find the person with the
right experience and expertise for their needs and interests; this approach
assumes the codification of tacit knowledge through developing a digital or
paper-based knowledge map (Davenport and Prusak, p. 72-80), or “yellow
pages”(Earl, 2001, p. 220), of the individuals in which tacit knowledge
resides; it is arguably half-way between the codification and personalization
strategies;
� Analytical KM deals with codifying knowledge by writing information in
documents and databases, storing it (especially) in databases, and analysing
it to support business processes; it is predominantly a strategy of codification;
� Engineering-process KM focuses on using knowledge to develop company
‘processes’ and involves the codification of “work-practices, procedures or
methodology” in documents (Binney, 2001, p. 36), coupled with the use of
business tools; as opposed to Earl, Binney considers this type of KM to have
evolved from ‘quality management’ too, not just from process reengineering;
it is predominantly a strategy of codification because the aim is to codify
processes;
27
� Commercial-Asset KM focuses on the re-use of codified assets, and implies
that company ‘know-how’ is codified and written in documents; as opposed
to Earl who has the cartographic school for the management of human
intellectual property (IP) which resides in the organisation’s employees,
Binney includes managing people as knowledge assets in the same type of
KM, that is asset management KM; this approach is mostly a codification
strategy which fits an economic model of re-use;
� Organizational-Innovation KM focuses on developing an organisational
culture that encourages employees to form teams or communities of interest,
and share knowledge within and among these communities; this approach is
mostly a personalization strategy because it emphasizes person-to-person
communication;
� Spatial KM involves designing and organizing the company building in a
way that causes employees to interact often, on the assumption that they will
create and share knowledge through frequent socialization;
� Strategic-Developmental KM focuses on manipulating employees
knowledge capabilities and attitudes towards sharing and using knowledge;
this approach is mostly a personalization strategy because it emphasizes
person-to-person communication.
Appendix 4 contains the detailed description of the above KM framework.
28
Chapter 3: Research methodology
3.1 Description of the qualitative approach
It can be argued that it is best to use qualitative research, because the approach taken
is exploratory and explanatory. Bryman (2004) and Pickard (2007) both characterize
the qualitative research methodology as being interpretivist, while Pickard (2007)
defines interpretivism as a research paradigm that goes hand-in-hand with
qualitative research and is based on relativism, subjectivism, analysis by case, and
understanding and transfer of findings. The research approach is deductive, being
based on existing studies and case studies, and predominantly qualitative, aiming to
answer the question of “how?”. It can be argued that the qualitative-deductive
approach is appropriate in this case because the aim is to rely on a pre-defined
theoretical framework based on Binney (2001) and Earl (2001) and in-depth analysis
of existing case studies (rather than conduct one), and the aim is also to discover
some common problems regarding theory and practice of KM strategies.
Alternatively, the research approach could be qualitative-inductive if based on a new
framework developed from the case studies from ECCH, but this would be more
complicated.
This dissertation’s research methodology is qualitative because it deals with words
not numbers, the findings are not obtained through statistical methods, and the focus
is on research and discovery of explanations and connections regarding how
companies apply KM strategies (Rudestam and Newton, 2001, p. 36; Pickard, 2007,
p. 239). On the other hand, research that is concerned with numbers, measurements,
and where the findings are obtained using statistical methods, and presented using
tables and charts, is called quantitative research.
Pickard argues that qualitative research is subjective and characterized by
trustworthiness, and the value of the research is judged as follows: truth value is
judged by credibility of the research, applicability is judged by transferability,
consistency by dependability, and neutrality by confirmability (Pickard, 2007, p. 19).
Pickard continues by describing the four characteristics of trustworthiness, as
29
follows: transferability implies that the research results should not be generalized in
order to allow them to be transferable, dependability implies supporting the
researcher with evidence of appropriately applying the right method, and
confirmability implies a derivative research which allows the findings to be tracked
back to the original data (Pickard, 2007, p. 20-21). This study aims to meet these
four attributes by providing meaningful arguments for both the conclusions and
research procedures applied, and by avoiding generalization of findings.
Pickard explains that qualitative research commonly uses the case study method
(Pickard, 2007, p. 85-93), but for the purpose of this dissertation existing case
studies shall be used for two reasons, which are: conducting field work for a case
study arguably takes several months depending on each case study (Pickard, 2007, p.
93), and making a cross-comparison requires at least two case studies (the aim is to
use four), so that given the time available for this research, it can be argued that
relying on published case studies from European Case Clearing House (ECCH) is
the best approach. Pickard also mentions that the case study method is holistic, and
also characterized by transferability (Pickard, 2007, p. 93), which as discussed
above is a trait of the qualitative research methodology.
Pickard argues that “constant comparative analysis” is the most cited of the four
strategies useful in qualitative research, and this strategy involves the following:
identifying and describing concepts (process called “open coding”), creating and
relating categories and subcategories (process called “axial coding”), and finally
refining the theory and the conceptual framework (this stage being called “selective
coding”) (Pickard, 2007, p. 239-244). Pickard also discloses methods of presenting
findings obtained through qualitative research, and these are: the story which is the
most frequently used, the concept map which presents theoretical links and
connections, and the rich picture which is a good visual aid (Pickard, 2007, p. 245).
Furthermore, Pickard stresses the importance of not quantifying the data obtained
through a qualitative methodology because that would depreciate the depth of the
study (Pickard, 2007, p. 249). This dissertation aims to apply “constant comparative
analysis” on the case studies from ECCH in order to answer the research question
“What are the similarities (including common problems) and differences between
30
the case studies?”, and present the findings of the cross comparison through all three
presentation methods – story, concept map, and rich picture – but especially story.
Rudestam and Newton present three qualitative research traditions –
“phenomenology”, “hermeneutics”, and “ethnographic inquiry” – out of which the
most appropriate for this particular study seems to be the “ethnographic inquiry”
because, as the authors say, this tradition “may use description, interpretation, and
explanation and the inductive (descriptive and interpretive) or deductive (working
from theory)”, and applies the “constant comparative method” described above
(Rudestam and Newton , 2001, p. 39-43). Rudestam and Newton also mention
methods of presenting findings of qualitative research, confirming that the results
are most commonly shown in written form, but mentioning that these can also be
presented through “scatter plots, context charts, causal networks, and causal models”
(Rudestam and Newton , 2001, p. 161).
Many (Rudestam and Newton, 2001, p. 37; Pickard, 2007, p. 14; Bryman, 2004, ?p.
20) argue that qualitative research is characterized by, among others, an inductive
approach. However, the approach used in this dissertation, although qualitative and
aiming to answer the question of “how?”, can be deductive which implies using a
predefined analytical framework to analyse the case studies, or inductive which
would mean developing the framework from the analysis of the case studies. For the
purpose of meeting the aims and objectives set for this dissertation, it can be argued
that it is best to pre-define an analytical framework on the basis of Hansen et al
(1999), Earl (2001), and Binney (2001), and analyse the case studies with respect to
that framework, this meaning a deductive approach.
To sum up, the research methodology used is qualitative and deductive.
31
3.2 Research strategy
The research process involves analysis and synthesis and the synthesis is
hierarchical, approach described by Cuthbert et. al (1995), the aim is to focus on and
selectively analyze the relationships between the taxonomies and their applications
and the relationships between the case studies chosen, and discover concepts and
relationships. Using the hierarchical approach, the aim is to answer the research
questions regarding the similarities (including common problems) and differences
between the chosen case studies. The alternative synthesis approach is the facetted
approach which treats each concept individually, groups the concepts and involves
no cross-classification.
Additionally, Thorpe and Moscarola (1991) propose four research strategies, named
after fictional detectives, and these are: the theoretical/rational approach (Hercule
Poirot), the scientific information approach (Sherlock Holmes), the empirical
intuitive approach (Maigret) and the push hard/provoke a response approach (Dirty
Hairy). It can be argued that the Theoretician/Hercule Poirot approach is appropriate
for this research, because it relies heavily on theory in the field, analysis and
deductions.
Table 3 presents the adopted methodology.
32
Table 3. Description of the research methodology
33
3.3 Data analysis
The data is extracted from three case studies purchased from the ECCH website,
which is specialized in “supporting case learning” (ECCH, 2011). The companies
were chosen based on the example organisations given by Hansen et al (1999) and
Earl (2001), specifically Hansen gives HP as an example of the personalization
strategy, and Dell as an example of the codification strategy (Hansen et al, 1999, p.
6); and Earl gives HP as an example for the engineering/process school of KM, and
IBM as an example for the commercial school of KM (Earl, 2001, p. 221-223).
(Also, these chosen companies are all from the IT industry because of personal
academic background in IT, which is related to a personal interest in IT
organisations.)
The appropriate efforts (considerable searching and browsing) were made to find the
best (on subject, publication date, etc.) that the ECCH had (at the time of this
research) on knowledge management at IBM, Dell, and HP respectively. The IBM
case study is the most recent (2009), while the HP and Dell ones are from 2004 and
2003 respectively. Light research has been done to check whether the companies,
especially HP and Dell, have changed or upgraded their KM approaches since the
case studies had been published. However, all these case studies were published
after the KM frameworks used as reference, and the descriptions of their KM
strategies are rather complete.
The authors of these case studies mention very little about how the studies were
conducted, in a short paragraph before or on the first page, as follows: Marchand et
al state that the Dell case study was written at the International Institute for
Management (IMD) Development and that the study relies on “public sources of
information”; Cole and Lee mention that the HP case study is an INSEAD field
research; Gupta et al mention about the IBM case study that it was “compiled from
public sources” and conducted at the ICMR Center for Management Research; they
all mention that the studies were written “as a basis for class discussion”, and not to
illustrate efficient or inefficient management (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 1; Cole and
34
Lee, 2004; Gupta et al, 2009, p. 1). There is no mention of the aims, development,
problems, or time frame of the case studies.
Since KM strategies are described in words (not numbers), the data extracted from
these case studies is of qualitative nature, corresponding with the qualitative
research methodology described above.
The analysis of the KM approaches adopted by the three case companies (IBM, HP,
and Dell) is done using as guideline thematic analysis, as described by Braun and
Clarke (2006), which was chosen in accordance with the research objectives –
strengths and weaknesses of various KM approaches, similarities and differences
between theory and practice – which are expected to lead to emergent themes, for
this purpose the following steps are taken:
� step 1: familiarisation with the KM frameworks proposed by Hansen et al
(1999), Earl (2001), and Binney (2001);
� step 2: developing the emergent KM framework based on the frameworks of
the three authors mentioned above, after having discussed the similarities
and differences between them;
� step 3: familiarisation with the KM approach of each company;
� step 4: analysing the KM approach against the KM framework developed at
step 2;
� step 5: final analysis of the company’s KM approach to develop themes
regarding the similarities and differences between theory and practice;
� step 6: cross-comparison of the case studies to develop themes across the
various KM strategies they adopted;
Step 1 involves briefly describing Hansen’s two complementary but different KM
strategies, Earl’s seven schools of KM, and Binney’s six types of KM, and making
associations between the approaches described by them. Step 2 involves proposing a
KM framework based on the similarities found in the first step, which is an
analytical framework because it is developed after analysing the KM frameworks of
35
the three authors. Steps 3-5 would be repeated for each organisation. Step 3 consists
of describing the company’s KM based on its case study. Step 4 involves analysing
the company’s KM against the framework developed at step 2, consequently
verifying it. Step 5 consists of developing the themes which may emerge regarding
the differences between the theoretical description of the KM approach and its
practice, including the following: what KM initiatives does the company take that
are not mentioned in the framework, what is mentioned in the framework and not in
the company’s KM strategy, what are the results of each KM initiative, and when
knowledge is codified what knowledge codification methods does the company use.
The last step, step 6, consists of developing themes regarding the common problems
that appeared before and after the KM initiatives were implemented (e.g. lack of
cooperation from the employees caused by failure to provide the appropriate
incentives). Figure 3 describes the steps of the thematic analysis used.
Figure 3. Thematic analysis steps
36
3.4 Ethical aspects
This dissertation falls under the no risk category because it relies exclusively on
existing case studies, and there are no human participants involved. It can arguably
be assumed that the conductors of the case studies – Gupta et al (2009), Cole and
Lee (2004), Marchand et al (2003) - purchased from ECCH followed the appropriate
ethical protocols, such that all information written by them is public and can be
(re)used completely.
37
Chapter 4: Case Studies – Discussion and Analysis
4.1. Knowledge Management at IBM
4.1.1 Review of Case Study 1: “Knowledge Management
Initiatives at IBM” (Gupta et al, 2009)
The first case study is regarding the knowledge management (KM) approach of the
well-known information technology (IT) company International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM) and is based on the article by Gupta et. al (2009). The study was
conducted at the ICMR Center for Management Research and it relies on published
sources. The case study describes at length the KM initiatives implemented by IBM,
consisting of an expensive and complex IT infrastructure developed to support
knowledge creation and sharing. The analysis of this case study consists of a review
of the case study, followed by describing the company’s KM with respect to the
frameworks proposed by Hansen et al (1999), Earl (2001), and Binney (2001).
IBM is an IT company with a considerable tradition, Gupta et al mention that in
1914 Thomas J. Watson Sr. (“father of modern IBM”) became general manager of
Computing, Tabulating and Recording Company (CTR), and in 1924 he renamed it
as “International Business Machines” (IBM) (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 3).
IBM’s knowledge management (KM) approach valued knowledge assets and
communities (almost) equally, in the sense that IBM started paying attention to the
value and importance of “knowledge assets” in 1994, and one year later (1995) the
company started exploiting “communities of practice”, known at IBM as
“knowledge networks” (Gupta et al, 2009). According to Gupta et al (2009), around
1994 the company had been struggling on the market for some years, but in 1993
Louis Gerstner took over as CEO of the company and made the following changes:
38
- on the one hand, the company focused its efforts on “building portfolios of
intellectual capital and intangible assets” (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 2), while
also encouraging knowledge asset re-use,
- and on the other hand, IBM started changing the work habits and reward
system from individual performance to team performance, this leading to
organizing the company in “communities of practice”, called “knowledge
networks”; in addition, IBM introduced a complex IT infrastructure to
support collaboration and knowledge sharing, this also acting as knowledge
repositories.
The authors of the case study describe KM at IBM, as follows: “The knowledge
generated in IBM could be broadly classified as operational data, knowledge assets,
intellectual capital, research & analysis, information obtained from the intranet,
and the information available from the Internet” (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 5). In other
words, IBM used several approaches of exploiting knowledge, and showed a
preference for knowledge that could be codified and reused, and on this note the
company invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing a complex IT
infrastructure that mostly dealt with knowledge which could be codified (i.e. explicit
knowledge), but also aided the communication of tacit knowledge.
In 1997, Louis Gerstner announced that he wants to turn IBM into “the world’s
premier KM company”, and “to turn itself into a KM driven company, IBM
upgrades its IT infrastructure by investing around US$ 400 million to facilitate
knowledge sharing” (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 5).
IBM’s KM IT infrastructure includes the following technologies listed and described
in detail by Gupta et al (2009), technologies which support the codification, storage
and use of explicit knowledge, as well as the transfer and management of tacit
knowledge, and these are as follows:
1. Intellectual Capital Management (ICM) - a program that dealt with
intellectual property, supported the codification and encouraged reuse of
knowledge assets, there is one “asset management program” for every
business unit;
39
2. KnowledgeView - the “asset management program” used by the Business
Consultancy Services Unit, which was a knowledge repository including
“discussion forums, resources, intellectual capital, etc.” (Gupta et al, 2009,
p. 4);
3. Intellectual Capital Repository (ICR) - knowledge repository which stored
knowledge generated from projects;
4. Intranets - with job specific portals, such as the employee directory and the
corporate intranet, a technology which Binney (1999) considers to belong to
every type of KM, along with portals and the Internet;
5. K Portal – portal;
6. ICM AssetWeb – a portal which included the knowledge repository with
discussion forums called Knowledge Café, and a business intelligence tool
called Knowledge Cockpit;
7. Competency Network – community;
8. On Demand Workplace: Learning@IBM – online training;
9. BluePages – knowledge map, included Lotus Anytime instant messaging; in
2006, over 80% of IBM employees were registered with BluePages, which is
described as “a corporate directory with instant messaging and email
facilities”; the authors mention, that despite BluePage’s advantages, there
was the disadvantage that it was the option of the employees to update their
details or not (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 9);
10. ManagerJam, InnovationJam (sessions mentioned in the case study :
ManagerJam 2001 among IBM managers, ValuesJam 2003 among IBM
employees; WorldJam 2004 between IBM employees; HabitatJam 2005
Canada; InnovationJam 2006 among IBM employees, business partners and
clients) – intranets, forums, virtual teams;
11. CollaborationCentral: including TeamRooms; ThinkPlace – collaboration
forums; in 2006 CollaborationCentral contained approximately 27,000 active
Team Rooms;
12. Instant Messaging & VoIP (Voice over IP, Voice over Internet Protocol) –
collaboration;
13. E-meetings/Web conferences – this, alongside instant messaging, started
being used in 2002 and were widely used since;
40
14. BlogCentral and Wikis – collaboration; in 2006 BlogCentral had 23,000
users and over 3,500 active blogs;
15. CommunityMap – communities, knowledge map;
16. Lotus QuickPlace
17. Virtual Team Room – virtual teams;
18. Dogear – social bookmarking system;
19. QED (Quick and Easily Done) Wiki – Wikis, podcasts, blogs, etc.
The authors of the case study mention that IBM won a couple of awards for its
knowledge management strategy, namely the KMWorld Awards – KM Reality
category in 2005, and the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Award in
November 2007 (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 2). The authors finish with a summarized
description of the benefits and difficulties met by IBM regarding its KM strategy.
The benefits of the company’s KM infrastructure are availability of information,
which help employees do their jobs efficiently, and a “rich repository of knowledge”
resulted from this initiative of encouraging and enabling communication within the
company. The authors mention that “IBM was able to reuse the captured
intellectual assets, and improve the skills of the employees through knowledge
transfer”, achieving savings of $81 million dollars in service and asset revenues in
2004-2006 (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 14). The authors also discuss the difficulties of
IBM’s KM, mentioning that “the main challenge for IBM was to enable the staff to
use the right kind of knowledge, given the vast amount of knowledge assets available
in the company”, and to solve this problem the company started using Really Simple
Syndication (RSS) and the social tagging service Dogear in 2007 (Gupta et al, 2009,
p. 14). Another drawback was regarding “language barriers” in the sense that this
was a limitation when employees from different countries speaking different
languages, had to cooperate (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 15).
To sum up, the case study describes at length IBM’s KM strategy, focusing little on
historical dates and abundantly on IBM’s IT infrastructure which supports KM at the
company, and finishes with a brief discussion regarding the advantages of IBM’s
KM strategy. Appendix 1 offers some important dates related to the evolution of
KM at IBM. Figure 4 describes the direct relationships with Hansen’s codification
strategy, Earl’s commercial school of KM, and Binney’s asset management KM, and
innovation and creation KM.
Figure
41
strategy, Earl’s commercial school of KM, and Binney’s asset management KM, and
innovation and creation KM.
Figure 4. KM at IBM (Hansen-Earl-Binney)
strategy, Earl’s commercial school of KM, and Binney’s asset management KM, and
42
4.1.2 Commercial-Asset KM
Earl gives IBM as an example of the commercial school: “IBM is another company
illustrative of the commercial school. In 1999, IBM leveraged its patent portfolio in
supply agreements with domestic and foreign companies to increase its sales of
components by $39 billion over five years. This was in addition to annual licensing
income of more than $1 billion in the previous three years” (Earl, 2001, p. 233), and
the case study supports this association.
To review, Earl (2001) defines the “commercial” school, which is the only school
belonging to the “economic” category, as one “explicitly creating revenue streams
from the exploitation of knowledge and intellectual capital”, which has as aim the
exploitation of knowledge assets and “know-how”, its critical success factors are
specialized teams and institutionalized process, its principal IT contribution is the
intellectual asset register and processing system, and its “philosophy” is one of
“commercialization” (p. 217-218).
It can be argued that IBM belongs to the commercial-asset KM because the
company started exploiting knowledge assets as early as 1994 and developed several
intellectual asset register and processing systems, also described above, which are as
follows: the Intellectual Capital Management (ICM), the KnowledgeView asset
management program, and the Intellectual Capital Repository (ICR) (Gupta et al,
2009).
Regarding the success factors of this KM approach, knowledge was organized and
indexed, and developed and used thoroughly. The company’s KM initiatives were
focused to not waste anything.
In the analytical framework, described in a previous chapter, based on the
taxonomies by Hansen et al (1999), Earl (2001) and Binney (2001), Earl’s
“commercial” school was considered as corresponding with Hansen’s codification
strategy and Binney’s “asset management KM”, and IBM’s strategy respects
(almost) all characteristics of the commercial-asset KM, but there are also
similarities with organizational-innovation KM, discussed later-on.
43
IBM’s KM strategy focuses on the management of knowledge assets as intellectual
property (IP), and both explicit (codified) and tacit knowledge, as commercial-asset
KM. IBM’s KM approach can also be considered to correspond with organizational-
innovation KM because IBM built an environment, specifically an IT infrastructure,
to encourage and support team-work, collaboration and knowledge sharing, but this
will be discussed in the next sub-chapter.
Several KM applications and enabling technologies, listed by Binney (2001), and
belonging to commercial-asset KM can be identified in IBM’s KM approach (Gupta
et al, 2009), as follows:
- intellectual property: Intellectual Capital Management (ICM);
- document management: K Portal, ICM AssetWeb;
- content management: ICM AssetWeb;
- knowledge repositories: Intellectual Capital Repository, and Knowledge
Café (part of ICM AssetWeb);
- knowledge maps: BluePages (“a corporate directory with instant messaging
and e-mail facilities” (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 8), including Lotus Anytime
instant messaging), “knowledge networks”, and CommunityMap.
The only aspect of the commercial-asset KM that IBM did not implement is
“knowledge valuation” and the company is not described to measure knowledge,
but rather to document and store everything. There was however a task of the
knowledge networks to evaluate publications submitted to IBM, but this was
arguably for the purpose of organizing those publications (Binney, 2001, p. 38;
Gupta et al, 2009, p. 5).
The three main characteristics of the codification strategy are reuse economics,
people-to-documents communication, and investing heavily in IT (Hansen et al,
1999, p. 3). All three characteristics are present in IBM’s KM approach, as follows:
- reuse economics: since 1994 IBM launched initiatives of capturing
knowledge assets for the purpose of re-using them many times, as the
44
authors of the case study mention: “IBM was able to reuse the captured
intellectual assets, and improve the skills of the employees through
knowledge transfer” (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 14);
- IBM’s IT infrastructure encouraged people to register in knowledge maps
(CommunityMap, Competency ), write blog entries (BlogCentral) and edit
Wikis, write and discuss ideas on forums (ManagerJam, InnovationJam),
communicate through instant messaging and VoIP, and in general make use
of IT to create, transfer, and obtain knowledge;
- IBM invested in IT for KM starting 1994, when the company developed the
Intellectual Capital Management (ICM) program and the KnowledgeView
asset management program, and in 1997 the authors mention that “to turn
itself into a KM driven company, IBM upgraded its IT infrastructure by
investing around US$ 400 million to facilitate knowledge sharing. This
included the largest single-company rollout ever of groupware to 240,000
Lotus Notes users” (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 5).
45
4.1.3. Organizational-Innovation KM
IBM respects the success factors of this school, “sociable culture” and “knowledge
intermediaries”, and has a “philosophy” of collaboration, through its ‘knowledge
networks’. The knowledge networks are organized in roles such as leader, router,
and category owners, “frequent interaction among team members” was encouraged,
and there is mention of a system of incentives; these communities had a more or less
formal organization depending on the business unit they belonged to (Gupta et al,
2009, p. 5, 13).
Also, several KM applications and enabling technologies, listed by Binney (2001),
and belonging to organizational-innovation KM can be identified in IBM’s KM
approach (Gupta et al, 2009), as follows:
- communities: “communities of practice” a.k.a. “knowledge networks”,
Competency Network, CommunityMap;
- collaboration: collaboration forums like CollaborationCentral (including
TeamRooms) and ThinkPlace, Instant Messaging & VoIP (voice mail) and
Blogs (BlogCentral) and Wikis;
- discussion forums: in KnowledgeView, and Knowledge Café (part of ICM
AssetWeb);
- networking: Competency Network;
- virtual teams: Virtual Team Rooms, ManagerJam, InnovationJam;
- research and development: “research & analysis” is among the six
categories of knowledge generated at IBM, and the Competency Network
database included “research reports about a particular topic” (Gupta et al,
2009, p. 5, 7);
- voice mail: VoIP.
46
However, it can be argued that it suffices to consider that with respect to Binney’s
(2001) KM spectrum, IBM implemented a combination of asset management KM
and innovation and creation KM.
4.1.4. Discussion and Conclusions
IBM invested heavily in an IT infrastructure that enabled KM, and fits the
characteristics of Hansen’s codification strategy because of this and because of the
company’s knowledge asset reuse. Also due to its exploitation of knowledge assets,
IBM corresponds with commercial-asset KM, which was discussed in the analytical
framework from a previous chapter. It can be argued that IBM’s KM also had
features from organizational-innovation KM, because it enabled “knowledge
networks” and collaboration through discussion forums.
Based on the above discussion and the KM framework described in Table 2, IBM’s
KM strategy is a combination of the commercial-asset and the organizational-
innovation KM. This subchapter aims to describe how IBM implemented these KM
strategies, that is what is similar to and what is different from the KM framework,
and what were the results.
IBM’s KM approach (Gupta et al, 2009) had a couple of elements from Binney’s
(2001) analytical KM and developmental KM and, of course, the “pervasive
technologies” (Binney, 2001, p. 37) common to all types of K, as follows:
- business intelligence (KM application of analytical KM): Knowledge
Cockpit;
- online training (enabling technology of developmental KM): On Demand
Workplace (ODW, including Learning@IBM);
- intranets (“pervasive” technology): Intranet with job specific portals,
employee directory, corporate intranet: ManagerJam, InnovationJam;
- portals (“pervasive” technology): K Portal (p. 6), ICM AssetWeb.
47
IBM’s KM initiatives aimed to provide better and faster services for customers, and
did just that.
The company had few problems, as follows:
- BluePages consisted of details to be included by HR managers only, and
details to be entered and updated by the particular employee; since it was not
mandatory for employees to update their details, the system had some out-of-
date information (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 9);
- The KM system was too complex and the total of knowledge assets the
company owned was too great, such that sometimes looking the right
knowledge was like looking for a needle in the haystack, and employees did
not always use the best knowledge asset for the job; IBM used RSS and
Atom to enable better information availability, but a better solution like the
social bookmarking system Dogear was introduced only in 2007 (Gupta et al,
2009, p. 14);
- Communication was mostly done through communication tools and systems
(not face-to-face), and it can be argued that teammates are more inclined to
share and create knowledge when they communicate directly; in other words
some employees were reluctant to share much, and some tacit knowledge
was lost as a result of virtual interaction (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 15);
- Language barriers was another setback, as there was no single language for
communication, so employees from different language speaking countries
often communicated in their first language and the knowledge created would
need to be translated before being spread and used internationally (Gupta et
al, 2009, p. 15);
The advantages of IBM’s KM strategy out-weight the drawbacks, as the company
developed through re-use of knowledge assets and realized considerable savings
because of situations when KM had been used efficiently and with success (Gupta et
al, 2009, p. 14). IBM arguably did not apply an 80-20 split between the codification
and personalization strategies, as the company focused equally on the commercial-
asset KM and the organizational-innovation KM.
48
In conclusion, IBM’s KM strategy, shown in Figure 5, is very complex and heavily
supported by IT. Since the investment of almost half a billion dollars in its KM
system, the company continuously made improvements as can be seen in Appendix
1. All the characteristics of commercial-asset KM and the organizational-innovation
KM have been found in IBM’s KM initiatives and discussed above. What IBM did
in addition was use business intelligence applications, an element of the analytical
KM, and training, which is an element of the strategic-developmental KM.
Figure 5. KM at IBM
49
4.2. Knowledge Management at Dell
4.2.1. Review of Case Study 2: “DELL’s Direct Model:
Everything to do with Information” (Marchand, D.; Chung,
R.; Kettinger, W., 2003)
The case study was written at the International Institute for Management
Development (IMD) and is a result of aggregating information from public sources,
focusing a lot on the history of Dell Computers and financial data, and rather little
on information and knowledge management at Dell. It can be argued that it is useful
to analyse knowledge management (KM) at Dell because Hansen et. al (1999) gives
this company as an example of the codification strategy. The writer of the case study
described Dell’s development as an IT company by identifying and treating eight
phases (Marchand et al, 2003), the first three being before the Internet and the other
four related to the use of the Internet, as follows: “US growth (1984-1986), Europe
expansion (1987-1988), first downturn (1989-1994), online information (1994-1995),
online sales (1996-1998), online supply chain management and customer services,
and e-initiatives (1998-2001), downturn and recovery (2001-2002)”, and finally
“future challenges (2002 Onwards)”.
Dell’s advantage on the IT market has always been due to its direct model, which
means selling PCs directly to the consumer, saving time and money by avoiding
distributors, and allowing Dell to offer a better price than the competition
(Marchand et al, 2003, p. 1). Before 1994, Dell made its sales through telephone,
and after the direct model was integrated with the Internet it started being used to
gather usable information from customer interactions, and Dell also improved
knowledge creation and flow within the company (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 1).
The company came to be in 1984 in the USA, by making PCs that were “IBM
clones”, and in 1985 Dell started making its own computers, and later expanded to
Europe, starting with the United Kingdom (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 4). Dell started
with customers that were individual consumers and small and medium enterprises
50
(SMEs), and later moved up to large companies, which had different needs from its
first customers (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 4).
In 1986, Dell’s main priority became to understand customer needs and better meet
them, which was requested of all departments in the company, from salespeople to
engineers (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 6).
Dell’s KM initiatives began in the 1989-1994 period, when management noticed a
problem with people’s mindsets regarding knowledge sharing and use, and also
upgraded the company’s information system to include business analytic and
reporting tools, as the author of the case study explains: “Michael Dell realized that
he needed to correct the ways his people managed and used information. First, he
doubled the budget for information systems to link every Dell operation. Then, the
company acquired business analytic and reporting tools, and started a laborious
and revealing process to analyze every segment and channel carefully to come up
with a profit and loss statement for each” (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 7). To fix the
problem with the employees’ mindset regarding sharing and using information and
knowledge, Dell Computers took the following actions: started hiring managers who
were “more information-oriented”, trained managers to apply knowledge to make
informed business decisions, encouraged its employees to apply information for
building relationships with their customers, encouraged its employees to share
knowledge both within and among departments, and hired people who had the right
mindset regarding knowledge management, all these for the purpose of creating an
“info-centric culture across the organization” (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 8).
In 1994, Dell started upgrading its direct model to make use of the Internet as much
as possible, as follows: started using e-mail, developed the “DellTalk bulletin board”
for customers to assemble into a community that dealt with networking and sharing
information, developed the Dell intranet for employees, implemented a training
program for its employees regarding the company’s initiatives involving the Internet,
and developed a “global communications network linking every employee”
(Marchand et al, 2003, p. 9-10).
In late 1995, Dell had an asset management team, a leasing service called “Dell
Asset Management”, an installation service called DellPlus, and managed
51
information to measure performance and to work with suppliers (Marchand et al,
2003, p. 10-11, 25). Between 1996 and 2002 (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 14-17), Dell
launched several on-line services for the purpose of improving sales, the relationship
with its suppliers, and the customer experience, as follows: Dell ConnectDirect for
customers, “Premier Pages” for relational customers, the extranet site
Valuechain.Dell.com for suppliers, “E-Support-Direct from Dell” for customers,
www.dellauction.com for customers, DellNet - a portal and Internet service provider
(ISP), Dell Ventures, and a financial portal/intranet which was to be completed in
2002. The author quotes Michael Dell’s argument for the importance of these
initiatives, as follows: “If your business isn’t enabled by information, if your
business isn’t enabled by customers and suppliers having more information and
being able to use it, you’re probably already in trouble…The Internet is like a
weapon sitting on a table ready to be picked up by either you or your competitors”
(Marchand et al, 2003, p. 14). In 2002, Dell acquired a data center which “housed
and maintained hundreds of server computers that ran Dell’s websites” (Marchand
et al, 2003, p. 17).
The author of the case study argues that: “In addition to being superb and natural at
using information to manage customer relations, Dell had created a strong culture
of knowledge sharing. For example, Dell ensured knowledge transfer by asking a
newly hired executive to meet individually with 50 people who could help him or her
to get started in the first month. (…) Improving information management had gone
hand in hand with the evolution of the model [Dell’s direct model]” (Marchand et al,
2003, p. 19-20).
To sum up, the case study describes the evolution of Dell’s businesses treating
expansions to new markets, and how the company adapted and upgraded its direct
model especially after the launch of the Internet, in 1991. The authors of the case
study focus on products and services offered by Dell, and mention only in a few
paragraphs information about the company’s knowledge management, which was
integrated with the company’s business in the 1989-1994 phase. Appendix 2
contains a few key dates more or less relevant to the evolution of knowledge
management at Dell.
Figure 6 presents Dell’s direct relationships with Hansen’s codification strategy,
Earl’s strategic school of KM, and Binney’s analytical KM.
Figure
52
presents Dell’s direct relationships with Hansen’s codification strategy,
Earl’s strategic school of KM, and Binney’s analytical KM.
Figure 6. KM at Dell (Hansen-Earl-Binney)
presents Dell’s direct relationships with Hansen’s codification strategy,
53
4.2.2. Analytical KM
Dell Computers used a database to store its orders as early as 1986, and this
information was used by the customer services department to offer better solutions,
and by the engineering, marketing and sales departments to design and develop
products more suitable for the customers’ needs (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 3, 5). This
is characteristic for analytical KM, as it is a re-use of customer information, and it
involves knowledge flow throughout the company, perhaps also storage of that
information, probably in databases, and analysis.
Around 1994, Dell acquired data analysis and reporting tools for managing profit
(Marchand et al, 2003, p. 7). Analysis and reporting are among the functions of
business intelligence, and, moreover, analysis and reporting tools might involve data
warehouses, which are by definition databases for reporting and analysis. Also
around this time, when Dell started integrating the Internet in its business model, the
company acquired three data centres in the US, Canada, and Europe, which
supported customer orders and developed “a global communications network
linking every employee” (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 10).
In 1998, Dell started using Oracle solutions for managing customer orders
(Marchand et al, 2003, p. 16), this arguably may involve Customer Relationship
Management (CMR) which is a service offered by Oracle.
Moreover, Blankenship mentions that Dell’s Enterprise Business Intelligence
supports decision making and reporting, uses Oracle technologies, and is based on
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and/or data warehousing (Blankenship, 2010).
The case study mentions several periods when Dell invested in its IT infrastructure,
for example: around 1994 it “doubled its budget for information systems to link
every Dell operation”, there was another IT upgrade in 1998, and another one
consisting of a data centre acquisition in 2002 (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 7, 16, 17).
Furthermore, Hansen mentions that Dell invested in an electronic repository which
contains a list of accessible components, and has 40,000 PC configurations, both the
54
repository and the list of configuration being heavily reused in assembling systems
(Hansen et al, 1999, p. 6).
Dell has relied on database technologies for its business intelligence for many years,
and has purchased technologies from Oracle, i2 Technologies, Glovia, and SAP
(Marchand et al, 2003, p. 16). In 2003, the company had four data centres for
processing worldwide customer orders. It arguably uses all enabling technologies of
analytical KM, has an economy of reuse, and its business processes are highly
computerized.
55
4.2.3. Strategic-Developmental KM
Dell Computers noticed that employees were reluctant to share knowledge and use it
as an asset around 1994, and to mitigate this problem Dell started hiring managers
who were more eager to apply information management methods of collecting
information and using it to make business decisions (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 8).
Dell also encouraged employees to share knowledge with employees from other
departments, and started hiring people who were more “information-oriented”, thus
aiming to “create an info-centric culture across the organization” (Marchand et al,
2003, p. 8). Dell also sent a descriptive email across the company about the new
strategy, had a training program, called “Know the Net”, which explained the
company’s e-commerce or Internet strategy to employees, and recommended an e-
commerce Amazon book to all managers (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 10).
Another training initiative was to improve liquidity, when around 1995, “Dell’s
asset management team made more than 100 presentations”, each to better explain
the problem and suggested solution to employees (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 10).
Thus, Dell’s strategic-developmental KM consisted of training and educating
employees, especially managers, to give them the knowledge and incentives to do
their jobs better, and to improve information flow across all business units, for the
ultimate purpose of enabling better and faster business decisions. Dell encouraged a
mentality of sharing knowledge and hired people, especially managers, who showed
a consciousness regarding the value of knowledge and the importance of good
communication (information flow) within the organisation.
In 1995, Michael Dell stated that: “Learning took the form of some notable public
missteps…Fortunately, the lessons we learned helped us identify and implement the
practices that gave us a secure foundation for future growth”, and on this note
employees were encouraged to learn from their mistakes under the company’s info-
centric policy (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 9).
Dell’s direct model matured alongside the company’s info-centric culture, starting
with the early 1990s, when the initiatives to improve knowledge use and sharing
56
began. On the one side, these initiatives consisted of acquiring data centres and
analysis and reporting tools. Since Dell’s direct model is characterised by
purchasing PCs directly from the company’s official website, the customer order-
related knowledge is codified and stored in databases as the customer orders through
Dell’s data centre servers. In order words, the customers’ order details are input into
the system by the customers.
57
4.2.4. Discussion and Conclusions
Additionally to analytical and strategic-developmental KM, Dell has some initiatives
discussed hereafter, and shown in Figure 7.
In 1995, Dell adopted a leasing service called Dell Asset Management (Marchand et
al, 2003, p. 25). Dell’s Asset Management Division (2008) describes how the
company implements software asset management, what techniques are used to
manage IT licenses. The management of licenses as assets is a feature related to
commercial-asset KM.
Dell also has a similarity with the organizational-innovation KM through its
DellTalk bulletin board – “a networking and information exchange community” for
customers (Marchand et al, 2003), since communities and networking are elements
of organizational-innovation KM.
The initiatives were supposed to lead to better customer services, better
understanding and anticipation of customer needs, and analyse new markets when
expanding to other countries.
Moreover, Microsoft and Dell wrote a paper about Dell’s knowledge management
strategy, which mentions collaboration at Dell through the use of Microsoft
Exchange Server and the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client,
which also stores codified knowledge (Microsoft and Dell, 2000). The paper also
mentions Dell’s document management system, used for managing fax orders, and
the initiative to develop “reporting tools that will help managers record, track, and
analyze the success of systems such as Customer Recovery [a document
management system for customer issues and orders]” (Microsoft and Dell, 2000).
Furthermore, David Bohl wrote a presentation about knowledge management at Dell,
mentioning Dell Solution Network (DSN) that deals with content management for
re-usable (explicit) knowledge, and which also makes use of decision trees; he also
mentions Dell’s community wiki for “idea and experience sharing” and “advanced
troubleshooting and learning”, in other words encouraging and using collaboration
(Bohl, 2007).
58
As presented in Appendix 4, content management and document management are
applications of commercial-asset KM, while decision trees are enabling technologies
used in systems-transactional KM. Collaboration and communities are traits of
organizational-innovation KM, and wikis are developed through collaboration and
used for learning thus supporting strategic-developmental KM.
To sum up, Dell’s KM approach appears to have similarities with commercial-asset
and organizational-innovation KM too.
Figure 7. KM at Dell
59
4.3. Knowledge Management at HP
4.3.1. Review of Case Study 3: “Creating and Spreading New
Knowledge at Hewlett-Packard” (Cole and Lee, 2004)
The case study on knowledge management at Hewlett-Packard (Cole and Lee, 2004)
is a field research undertaken by the INSEAD (Institut Européen d'Administration
des Affaires) business school, which describes in debt how quality control at
Hewlett-Packard (HP) evolved from its beginning, in 1939, to 2003. Hewlett-
Packard (HP) was chosen as a case study because Hansen gives this company as an
example of the personalization strategy, and Earl gives it as an example of the
“engineering/process” school of knowledge management (KM) (Hansen et al, 1999,
p. 6; Earl, 2001, p. 217). The fact that the authors of the case study describe in debt
the evolution of quality management at HP is relevant because this helps in placing
HP as belonging to Binney’s “process” KM, as Binney mentions that this type of
KM is often an outgrowth of quality management (Binney, 2001, p. 36).
Additionally, this case study offers some support that confirms the company’s
placement within Hansen’s and Earl’s KM frameworks. The analysis of this case
study consists of a review of the case study, followed by describing the company’s
KM with respect to the frameworks proposed by Hansen et al (1999), Earl (2001),
and Binney (2001).
It can be argued that the main idea of the article (Cole and Lee, 2004) is that
Hewlett-Packard‘s strategy for competing on the IT market was offering its
customers top quality products. The article is structured into two main sections, one
discussing the period between 1939 (when the company was founded) and 1994,
when the company had a Quality Department and used quality tools imported from
Japan and adapted, and the other discussing the 1994-2003 period when a new
initiative for quality control was proposed, one that wanted to ensure quality by
creating knowledge from the customer experience and using that knowledge to meet
customers’ quality expectations, in other words focusing on the customer.
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In 1957, Hewlett-Packard adopted a multi-divisional approach, adding up to 104
divisions world-wide and operating in 120 countries, with each division having great
autonomy, and this allowed the company to spread rapidly and to implement highly
customized problem solving solutions specific with the market situation from each
location. In this decentralized structure, there was corporate control over the human
resources, finance, and accounting departments, and also there is little mention of a
corporate quality department (Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 7).
Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard (YHP) – HP’s division in Japan - complained to HP
throughout the 1970s about faulty components sent from the United States to Japan
for assembly, but these problems were neglected by HP. In 1977, YHP adopted a
quality tool called Total Quality Control (TQC), which solved their quality problem,
won the division the Deming Prize for quality in 1982, and made the YHP division
the most appreciated in HP from 1981 to 1984. In the 1980s, two major changes
occurred: HP production changed drastically from batch to high-volume and high-
quality, and Japanese firms entered the market with superior quality products, thus
threatening United States (U.S.) companies, including HP. Unlike other U.S.
companies, HP had information on how to compete with Japanese quality, from its
Japanese division YHP. There is no mention in the case study on when the rest of
HP adopted TQC, but it can be considered that this happened in the 1980s, and YHP
was of great help to the successful implementation of this change. TQS is described
to emphasize methods of “careful planning, testing, data analysis, and incremental
improvement” (Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 1).
Other quality control initiatives adopted by HP were “hoshin management” and
Quality Maturity System (QMS), described hereafter.
“Hoshin management” was introduced throughout all HP divisions in 1992, by the
then chairman, president and Chief executive officer (CEO) Lew Platt, and the Chief
Operating Officer (or Chief Operations Officer; COO) Dean Morton, as an “annual
planning tool” that aimed to “align all organizational layers and employees toward
a few key company goals with a sense of urgency” (Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 4-5). The
authors of the case study mention that “hoshin management” was used annually at
HP, from 1994 to 1997, for the goal of achieving and sustaining leadership, as
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follows: “1994: Order fulfilment process; 1995: Customer satisfaction; 1996:
Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty; 1997: Customer loyalty, attraction,
retention, and referrals” (Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 12).
The other quality management approach, the Quality Maturity System (QMS) was
developed in 1987, with the first QMS reviews being performed in 1988, and
commissioned by the then CEO John Young. Between 1987 and 2003 there have
been three versions of QMS, with only the first two being described by the authors
of the case study, as follows: QMS 1.0 (1987-1991) dealt with “dimensions of
quality maturity: customer focus, planning process, process management,
improvement cycle, and total participation”, while QMS 2.0 (1992-1995) dealt with
“areas of quality review: strategic focus, business planning, process management,
improvement project, and leadership and participation” (Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 13).
Both QMS 1.0, which verified conformity with Total Quality Control (TQC), and
QMS 2.0, which focused on Total Quality Management (TQM) and “the process of
managing improvement projects” were used in 70% of all HP divisions, such that
50-60 reviews were being accomplished annually, and by 1997 more than 400
formal QMS reviews have been done. Cole and Lee mention that in time, the
Japanese “predefined problem-solving methods” offered by TQC and QMS were
considered to be bureaucracy by the engineers at HP, and became less helpful as
HP’s businesses evolved and changed in the early- and –mid 1990s (Cole and Lee,
2004, p. 6).
In the early- and mid- 1990s, when both “hoshin management” and QMS were
being used at HP, it started initiatives to re-invent itself, because trends in terms of
cost pressure, low-cost contract manufacturers, retailers, outsourcing to contract
manufacturers, and the importance of customer satisfaction, had changed drastically
in comparison with the 1980s. HP divisions were given even greater autonomy, as
mid-level units between corporate and the divisions were reduced. If in the 1980s
HP applied quality control approaches to face the Japanese quality threat, in the
1990s when Japan was no longer a threat, the then Corporate Director of Quality
Richard LeVitt made it his mission to reinvent quality control at HP, with a “new
quality vision” and new “skill sets required for quality managers” (Cole and Lee,
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2004, p. 7). For this purpose, in 1994 Richard LeVitt created the Research and
Development (R&D) committee and the Quality Roles Task Force, and advised all
divisions to focus less on Japanese quality tools and more on customers, to create
knowledge from customer experience on customer-centred quality and spread that
knowledge through all HP divisions. However, HP’s divisions were reluctant to
implement the new quality initiative proposed by the Quality Roles Task Force,
because they believed that they were doing just fine quality-wise, and because this
would have required extra time and effort from the employees (Cole and Lee, 2004,
p. 7). The authors of the case study do not mention whether the new customer-
centred quality initiative was adopted by all HP divisions, just that both the
Corporate Director of Quality Richard LeVitt, and the chairman, president and CEO
Lew Platt encouraged this new “customer-centred quality” approach to be used to
assure the quality of HP products (Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 8-9).
To sum up, from its beginning HP aimed to compete with other companies by
offering high-quality products to its customers. Between the 1980s and mid-1990s
this was ensured through quality control management tools imported from Japan and
adapted by all HP divisions, these being: Total Quality Control (TQC), Quality
Maturity System (QMS), Total Quality Management (TQM), and “hoshin”
management. Starting with 1994, HP conducted benchmarking studies aimed to
discover a better quality management, as the company’s business models evolved
along with the IT market, and the then Corporate Director of Quality Richard LeVitt
formed the R&D Committee and the Quality Roles Task Force, for the purpose of
recommending a new type of quality management which focused less on quality
tools and more on customers.
Appendix 3 contains a description of the events relevant to the evolution of quality
management at HP between 1939 and 2003. Figure 8 describes the direct
relationships between HP’s quality management and Earl’s engineering (process)
KM, and Binney’s process-based KM.
Figure
63
Figure 8. KM at HP (Hansen-Earl-Binney)
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4.3.2. Organizational-Innovation KM
Hewlwtt-Packard exhibits a culture of collaboration within and between the
company’s divisions, collaboration being the ‘philosophy’ of organizational-
innovation knowledge management. The divisions are connected through the
company’s intranet, which enables knowledge transfer. The case study does not
mention knowledge codification and storage, perhaps an explanation for this is given
by Gannon, who states that: “A knowledge management regime which people
associate with a more effective use of their time is much more likely to succeed than
one which is perceived as an added reporting layer or documentation requirement
with no benefit to the worker – an addition to the workload, not a reduction”
(Gannon, 1998). Some knowledge documentation is however done, as discussed
below.
Gannon, who wrote about KM at HP’s consultancy practice called the Professional
Services Organisation (PSO), states that HP is famous for its culture of team-work
and natural orientation toward problem solving. He also describes the company’s
intranet as “the best established and largest corporate intranets in the world (…) a
company-wide knowledge management tool spanning the entire business” (Gannon,
1998). He also mentions that employees are organized in communities, they
document their processes to transmit knowledge to those who take their previous job
as they advance career-wise, and that HP laboratories are extraordinary reservoirs of
knowledge.
Another characteristic of the organizational-innovation KM is the Research and
Development (R&D) Committee formed in 1994, whose mission was initially to
rethink “the role of quality managers”, and later became “reinventing quality at HP”
(Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 7). The case study does not mention the use of discussion
forums or virtual teams, which are the other KM applications of organizational-
innovation KM, but they are usually present on a company’s intranet, especially
when the company focuses on collaboration and team-work.
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It can be argued that HP applied a personalization KM strategy, as Hansen states:
“Hewlett-Packard, by contrast [with Dell], uses a personalization approach to
support its business strategy, which is to develop innovative products”. Hansen
gives HP as an example of the personalization strategy (Hansen et al, 1999, p. 6) for
the following reasons:
1. the company applies expert economics to offer highly customized solutions –
for example, an “electronic oscilloscope with a Windows operating system
and interface”;
2. engineers are encouraged to use the company’s airplane as much as
necessary to travel between divisions for the purpose of face-to-face
communication about possible new HP products.
Cole and Lee mention that one of the advantages of HP’s “multi-divisional structure”
was that each division offered customized products, services and problem-solving
specific to its region, which is a supporting argument for the company’s “expert
economics” (Cole and Lee, 2004, p.2). Furthermore, through the initiative of
moving from using quality tools toward exploiting customers to ensure quality, HP
would have aimed to invest less in IT, if the investment in quality tools is considered
to have been moderate, this further supporting HP’s inclusion in the personalization
strategy.
Since Cole and Lee focus mainly on the quality management side of HP’s KM
approach, a supporting document is necessary to better explore the company’s
organizational-innovation KM. A Knowledge Street Report (2006) on HP’s
collaboration-based KM is used for this purpose. The report discusses at length the
function of Knowledge Advisors (or K-Advisors) at HP, which consists of offering
consultancy services to employees on using the company’s right KM asset, and the
authors also mention how the staffing for this role is short. The report also mentions
some other aspects of KM at HP, as follows: “traditional repository-style knowledge
bases”, “open-plan offices”, Communities of Practice, a recognition program
consisting of ranking employees who show “KM behaviours (sharing, re-use, etc.)”
on the company intranet (Knowledge Street Report, 2006, p. 4, 10), and many others
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which constitute all characteristics of organizational-innovation KM and are shown
in Figure 9.
Figure 9. HP’s model for KM (Source: A Knowledge Street Report, 2006)
Figure 9 also shows what additional KM initiatives HP took, such as knowledge re-
use and repositories, which are characteristics of commercial-asset KM, archiving,
training and rewards and recognition programs (mentioned in Hansen’s
personalization strategy), and knowledge job roles (e.g. Knowledge Managers, K-
Advisors). Figure 9 also illustrates an analogy made by Davenport regarding the
similarity between information systems (IS) and knowledge management (KM)
projects, and how the main difference is that KM projects have a greater focus on
people (Davenport et al, 1998, p. 56).
HP’s KM is renowned as complex and well-established on the company’s culture,
related to a famous saying “If only HP knew what HP knows” by Lew Platt (former
HP CEO), and it is considered that the organisation’s “belief in the value of
collaboration has very deep roots” (Knowledge Street Report, 2006, p. 3).
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4.3.3. Engineering-Process KM
Hewlett-Packard’s business strategy is one of quality management, using quality
tools to ensure the delivery of quality products to customers. HP started adopting
quality control tools as early as 1977, and its divisions used QMS 1.0 which focused
on Total Quality Control (TQC), and QMS 2.0 which focused on Total Quality
Management (TQM) throughout the 1980s and the early- and mid- 1990s. HP also
conducted benchmarking studies between 1994 and 1995 to decide best practices,
and in 1995 implemented a new quality management which focused on customers
and was encouraged through the R&D Committee and the Quality Roles Task Force
(Cole and Lee, 2004).
The organization’s “philosophy” of capability – is at length discussed to have
existed at HP since the 1980s through various quality control tools – TQC, QMS,
and “hoshin management” – and since 1994 there have been efforts to create a
“customer-centred quality” control, all these efforts being to ensure HP’s capability
to meet the customers’ quality expectations (Cole and Lee, 2004). According to Cole
and Lee, HP relied on knowledge flows in the 1980s to import Total Quality Control
(TQC) from Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard (YHP) to the other HP divisions, as at the
time it, alongside other U.S. companies, was facing a quality threat from Japanese
firms. Also, the 1994 initiatives to adopt a new quality management approach
“grounded in knowledge of customer experiences, preferences, and behaviour”
were largely based on knowledge creation and flow, in other words the aim of the
engineering school (Earl, 2001, p. 217). Furthermore, because both QMS 1.0 based
on Total Quality Control (TQC), and QMS 2.0 based on Total Quality Management
(TQM) handled “process management” (Cole and Lee, 2004), and processes are the
focus of the engineering school (Earl, 2001, p. 217), this is another argument to
consider HP a case of engineering-process KM.
Earl gives HP as an example of the engineering/process school when he mentions
the two ideas driving the process school, as follows: “The first, exemplified by
Hewlett-Packard (HP), is that performance of business processes can be enhanced
by providing operating personnel with knowledge relevant to their tasks. The second
is that management processes are inherently more knowledge-intensive than
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business processes.” Earl arguments that the characteristics which make HP an
example of the process school are: the HP intranet, HP’s Web-based knowledge
links (Internet), and the mapped knowledge links between HP’s divisions (Earl,
2001, p. 217, 221-222). Earl also sums up that “the philosophy of the process school
is enhancing the firm’s core capabilities with knowledge flows” (Earl, 2001, p. 222).
Binney mentions that process KM is “often an outgrowth of other disciplines such
as the TQM” and the applications specific to this type of KM are, among others,
Total Quality Management (TQM), benchmarking, best practices, and quality
management (Binney, 2001, p. 36, 38). HP does not seem to have applied business-
process re-engineering (BPR), which is the other side of engineering-process KM,
but rather the company focused on improving its quality management techniques
and methods. Appendix 3 presents important dates related to the evolution of quality
management at HP.
The success factors of this type of KM – “knowledge learning” and “information
unrestricted distribution” – are arguably present in HP’s quality management, as
follows: HP learned from its Japanese division (YHP) how to compete with the
Japanese quality threat and implemented TQC in the early 1980s, which worked
well for the company until the early 1990s, when HP switched to ‘hoshin
management’ (also imported from Japan), and later it switched to Total Quality
Management (TQM).
For the above reasons, it can be argued that HP belongs to engineering-process KM.
Furthermore, Gupta, who published a case study on the evolution of KM at IBM,
mention that HP was initiated into the Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises
(MAKE) Hall of Fame in November 2007, along with IBM and other 19 companies
(Gupta et al, 2009, p. 2).
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4.3.4. Discussion and Conclusions
HP’s KM approach is comparable with that of IBM in its complexity, as can be seen
in Figure 10. The only drawback mentioned is the difficulty met by Lew Platt
(former HP CEO) in implementing a new KM initiative, caused by the divisional
organisation, because regional managers considered that the existing KM worked
well-enough and generally refused to recognize that a new KM initiative was
necessary. The advantages of its KM approach affects customers through better
quality services, and the company through better advantage on the IT market and
reputation. The advantages of its KM strategy are, as follows: enabling better quality
for customers, supporting competitive advantage, and a reputation for its KM, as
well as for quality services.
Figure 10. KM at Hewlett-Packard (HP)
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4.4. Discussion: Cross-comparison of the ECCH case
studies
To review, for the purpose of finding similarities and differences in how
organisations apply various knowledge-management (KM) strategies, three
companies from the same industry, specifically the IT industry, have been chosen
and analysed above with respect to the analytical KM framework developed based
on Hansen et al (1999), Earl (2001), and Binney (2001). Hewlett-Packard (HP) was
chosen because Hansen gives it as an example of the personalization strategy, and
Earl gives it as an example of the engineering (or process) school of KM. Dell was
chosen because Hansen gives it as an example of the codification strategy. And IBM
was chosen because Earl gives it as an example of the commercial school. Table 4
shows where the companies are situated with respect to the proposed KM
framework.
Table 4. KM and IBM – Dell – HP
Firstly, the companies have different levels of concern regarding applying a KM
strategy, meaning that: IBM invested heavily in KM, HP invested less based on the
available information, and Dell Computers had the lightest KM initiatives. This
might be related to the size of the company, and IBM is the largest and the oldest out
of the three companies.
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One similarity is in the difficulties met in implementing the chosen KM strategy,
that all three companies had problems with employees cooperation regarding the
KM strategy chosen by corporate, but in different ways. In the case of IBM, one
problem was when employees were not given incentives to update their details on
the BluePages knowledge map. Also at IBM there was another, more general,
problem caused by the complexity of IBM’s KM infrastructure, that employees were
not always using the appropriate knowledge asset, and to solve this problem IBM
introduced a company-wide social-tagging service called Dogear in 2007 and
employees started using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and Atom to make
knowledge more accessible (Gupta et al, 2009). In the case of Dell, to change the
employees’ mindsets when it came to facilitating knowledge flow, the company
hired firstly managers who were more “information-oriented” and then also hired
employees who had the right mindset for facilitating knowledge flow within and
among departments of the company, and generally encouraged people to share
knowledge (Marchand et al, 2003). In the case of HP, division-managers were
reluctant to switch from quality management to the new type of knowledge
management – that is customer-centred quality management – proposed by
corporate in 1994, because they thought the quality management approach did not
need improving upon, and thus the efforts necessary to adopt the new type of quality
management were not worth it (Cole and Lee, 2004).
Another similarity is that all three companies seem to have started their KM
initiatives around 1994. IBM clearly started its KM initiatives in 1994, and further
invested in its KM IT infrastructure in 1997, as the authors of the case study
analyzed in a previous section specify (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 4-5). Dell noticed that it
had to fix employees’ mindsets on the one hand, and invested in business analytic
and reporting tools on the other hand, towards the end of its 1989-1994 business
phase (Marchand et al, 2003, p. 7). HP had been using quality management –
described by Binney (2001) as one of the predecessors of process KM – tools since
the 1980s, but in 1994 started the initiative to redefine knowledge management by
exploiting knowledge from the customer experiences, behaviour and preferences
(Cole and Lee, 2004, p. 6-9). Furthermore, the attention IBM and HP gave to
investing in knowledge management can be assumed to have been comparable,
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because Gupta mention that in November 2007 both IBM and HP (and other 19
companies) were included in the Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises
(MAKE) Hall of Fame (Gupta et al, 2009, p. 2). This implies that good reputation
could be a benefit of a KM strategy.
Another similarity is that all companies applied a combination of two types of KM,
and when additional KM initiatives were taken they identified partially with other
one or two types of KM. For example, IBM used a couple of applications which
belong to analytical and strategic-developmental KM, respectively. Also, Dell has
several similarities with commercial-asset and organizational-innovation KM.
Furthermore, indeed all companies used the internet, intranets, extranets, or portals,
the technologies described by Binney as pertaining to all types of KM (Binney,
2001).
IBM and HP both apply the organizational-innovation KM, and it is worth-
discussing the similarities and differences between how each apply it. Both
organizations exhibit a ‘philosophy’ of collaboration, focus on networking,
communities, and deal with research and development. But in IBM’s case the use of
discussion forums and virtual teams is clearly described (see subchapter 4.1.3),
while HP is just described as well-known for its tradition of team-work and
networking, and also knowledge pooling is mentioned. Furthermore, Dell also
values collaboration, but rather as an additional KM initiative, because it did not
seem (based on the available information) to have such a strong culture of
communities and focus on team-work (rather than individual performance) as HP or
IBM.
Knowledge management writers who propose plans for choosing KM strategies, for
example Hansen and Earl (Hansen et al, 1999; Earl, 2001), advise that KM strategies
should be chosen based on the company’s existing culture, which is a fairly sensible
suggestion. In HP’s case, KM indeed developed based on the organisation’s existing
culture, and evolved along with it. However, IBM and Dell changed the
organisational culture when they implemented their KM initiatives (around 1994),
specifically with respect to creating/improving knowledge flow, and especially
regarding employees’ behaviour toward the asset of knowledge. On this note,
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Davenport et al (1998) state that knowledge management (KM) projects combine
the IT element and the human element just like information systems (IS) projects do,
but in KM projects the human element is much more complex.
One difference is in how the companies combined two strategies, whether or not
they respected Hansen’s 80-20 split rule, in other words using one strategy
predominantly and the other one to support the first (Hansen, 1999, p. 7).
IBM arguably invested equally (or at least comparably) in both commercial-asset
and organizational-innovation (personalization) KM, and the resulted KM worked
out quite well. The additional KM initiatives correspond with analytical KM
(codification) and strategic-developmental KM (personalization). However, the
company exhibits reuse economics and it invested heavily in IT, as even
collaboration and training are computer-based and predominantly virtually (see sub-
chapter 4.1). Also organisational knowledge-assets (company like know-how) were
codified, and human knowledge assets were registered in knowledge maps and
directories. Because of these, it could be considered that IBM uses a codification
strategy as the principal one, and applies a supporting strategy of personalisation by
enabling collaboration, communities, and team performance.
Dell relies on business analysis tools and codification, but also gave considerable
attention to changing employees’ mindsets towards sharing knowledge and held
training sessions about this. The additional initiatives were related to commercial-
asset and organizational-innovation KM (personalisation). Dell’s direct model
implies that customer orders can be codified and ordered automatically, and this
information is shared across all departments, from sales to engineers, and analysed
for decisions such as what personal computers (PC) configurations and components
to produce more of (Marchand et al, 2003). Regarding knowledge flows about and
among employees, the company used a collaboration and communication server,
community forums and a community wiki (Microsoft and Dell, 2000; Bohl, 2007).
In conclusion, customer knowledge and employee knowledge were codified, and the
reuse economics mentioned by Hansen is supported by the case study and additional
papers used for Dell’s KM analysis, such that the dominant strategy would be one of
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codification. The supporting personalisation approach is implemented through
collaboration, enabling knowledge sharing, and training (see sub-chapter 4.2).
On the other hand, HP arguably applied a 80-20 split between the personalization
and codification strategies (focusing on personalization), as follows: organizational-
innovation KM is a personalization strategy (as discussed in subchapter 2.5), and
quality management relies on planning, leadership, following guidelines, and not
much on technology, so engineering-process KM was mostly a strategy of
personalization the way HP implemented it, although there was an amount of
documentation involved. The additional KM initiatives are related to commercial-
asset and strategic-developmental KM (personalisation), and also archiving and KM
job roles, which are additional to the KM framework used. Since it was shown in the
analysis (sub-chapter 4.3) that the company has a strong tradition of collaboration
and even the offices are (at least sometimes) organised to enable communication and
the development of communities, it can be argued that the dominant strategy is
indeed one of personalisation. The supporting codification strategy consists of
knowledge capture and reuse, knowledge repositories, reporting, archiving, and
support systems (see Figure 9).
It has been discussed how all three companies value collaboration (characteristic of
organizational-innovation KM), but they also appear to value knowledge asset reuse
(characteristic of commercial-asset KM) and training (characteristic of strategic-
developmental KM). Regarding the commercial-asset characteristic, only IBM
clearly valued and codified human intellectual capital (IC) in addition to structural
capital, while Dell and HP just focused on knowledge repositories and re-use of
know-how, and there is no mention of knowledge maps. Regarding training, Dell
relied on it to enable knowledge sharing and develop a KM strategy, while HP and
IBM used it supportively.
To sum up, we have seen that (at least at IBM, HP, and Dell) a KM strategy
stretches over four approaches, adding up to half of the analytical KM framework
developed for the purpose of this study (see subchapter 2.5, and Appendix 4),
respecting (almost) exactly two KM approaches and having few elements from the
other two. All KM strategies have at least a few similarities with commercial-asset,
75
organisational innovation, and strategic-developmental KM. The only company that
had KM initiatives not mentioned in the framework, namely KM job roles and
archiving, was HP.
The potential benefits of a KM strategy are:
1. better understanding of customer needs: as Dell has learned from storing and
analysing customer orders;
2. better and faster customer service: as all three companies aimed to use KM
ultimately to improve customer satisfaction, as follows: Dell needed to know
what PC configurations were more popular, and by producing them in
advance it could deliver them faster when customers ordered them; HP
wanted to maintain its quality reputation, which was threatened by Japan in
the 1980s;
3. expansion to other countries: as when a company like Dell grows,
maintaining knowledge sharing organisation-wide becomes more
challenging, and knowledge reuse becomes more valuable;
4. financial savings due to the reuse of knowledge: IBM had considerable
savings due to this (see subchapter 4.1);
5. better knowledge availability: IBM being the largest company of those
studies (number of employees), computer-based and online training, as well
as knowledge reuse, is important for employees and for managers to enable
better business decisions; in the case of HP the Japanese quality management
techniques made available by the Japanese division (YHP), helped the
company compete in the market while competing IT organisations were
struggling;
6. a resulted rich knowledge repository: IBM and HP both use this for storing
knowledge to later be reused;
7. reputation: there are international recognized awards for knowledge
management, like the KMWorld Award won by IBM, and the MAKE award
won by both HP and IBM;
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8. competitive advantage: as HP used quality management to sustain its quality
reputation in the market;
In conclusion, a KM strategy improves knowledge flow across the organisation,
leading to better business decisions, and ultimately it is supposed to lead to better
and faster customer service. By storing knowledge, it can be reused and lead to
considerable savings, like IBM discovered.
The potential difficulties encountered when developing a KM strategy are:
- out-of-date information: for example, IBM discovered that employees would
not update their information in knowledge maps, as there were no incentives
to do so; the solution would be to provide incentives;
- language barriers: when the company is spread across different cultures and
there has to be an agreed upon language in which the knowledge is stored;
- KM system too complex: IBM had this problem, cause by the complexity of
its KM infrastructure, and provided a social bookmarking service and RSS as
a solution;
- challenge of implemented a KM initiative in a multi-divisional organisation:
like HP discovered, it is difficult to convince autonomous divisions to adopt
a new KM approach, especially if local managers are pleased with the
existing one.
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Chapter 5: Conclusions
5.1. Discussion of Objectives
1. What does the theory on KM strategies say?
This is at length described in the literature review, starting with the definitions of
information and knowledge, and the definitions of information and knowledge
management. Subchapter 2.3 describes at length the knowledge management (KM)
taxonomies of Hansen, Earl, and Binney. Subchapter 2.4 presents other six KM
taxonomies, as described by Begona Lloria. Subchapter 2.5 discusses the KM
framework built after merging the KM taxonomies of Hansen, Earl, and Binney, and
this KM framework is then used to analyse the KM approaches of IBM, Hewlett-
Packard (HP), and Dell.
2. Which recent studies have been conducted in this area and what are their
conclusions?
The answer to this question is present in the existing KM taxonomies on the one
hand (subchapters 2.3 and 2.4), and in the ECCH case studies on the other hand
(chapter 4). The conclusions of the ECCH case studies on knowledge management
at IBM, HP, and Dell, are at length discussed in chapter 4.
3. How do organisations implement these KM strategies?
The details of the KM initiatives adopted by the three companies studied are
analysed in Chapter 4. All three organisations – IBM, Dell, and HP - focused on two
KM strategies from the framework and also had additional KM initiatives usually
characteristic to other two KM approaches from the framework. However, two KM
initiatives adopted by HP, that of KM job roles and that of archiving, were
mentioned by neither Hansen, nor Earl, nor Binney.
It is discussed in the cross-comparison how all companies implemented, to a more or
less extent, commercial-asset, organizational-innovation, and strategic-
developmental KM. Organizational-innovation KM, consisting of collaboration,
78
communities and communication, consisted of either face-to-face communication
and incentives to share knowledge, like in the case of HP, which had a predominant
personalisation strategy; or, it was heavily supported by communication and
collaboration tools, and done virtually, like in the cases of Dell and IBM, who show
a predominant codification strategy. Training (strategic-developmental KM) was
computer-based and online in the case of IBM, and had a more personal (face-to-
face) approach in the case of HP, as described by Gannon (Gannon, 1998) and
discussed in subchapter 4.3.2.
4. What are the similarities (e.g. common problems) and differences between
the case studies?
The similarities are usually in the benefits and drawbacks brought by the KM
strategies, in the sense that all aimed to enable better customer service, and
improved knowledge availability within the organisation. IBM and HP also got into
the Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Hall of Fame. IBM and
HP have KM systems of comparable complexity, and both implemented
organizational-innovation KM, but in slightly different ways. There were some
common problems in getting employees, and in HP’s case also regional managers, to
accept a new KM initiative.
All similarities and differences are discussed in the cross-comparison, subchapter
4.4.
5. What are the similarities and differences between theory and practice?
The companies’ KM approaches generally respect the characteristics of the
strategies from the KM framework, as can be seen in each company’s analysis and
Figures 5, 7 and 10. The enabling technologies are used to different extents: for
example, in the cases of organizational-innovation KM and strategic-developmental
KM, at IBM collaboration and training are heavily supported by technology, while
at HP it has a more personal approach. All similarities and differences are discussed
in the analysis of each individual company’s KM and in the cross-comparison
(Chapter 4).
79
The above discussion refers specifically to research questions, related to objectives.
To sum up, the framework developed proved useful in identifying the KM strategies
of three global companies, and the theory on KM strategies was generally confirmed.
Also, several benefits of having a KM strategy, as well as a few difficulties, were
identified. Regarding the advantages of any specific approach, they are more or less
related to its philosophy (see Appendix 4), for example: commercial-asset KM helps
to improve commercialization and enables asset reuse, organizational-innovation
KM helps to improve collaboration (knowledge sharing and creation), and so on.
5.2. Limitations of this Research
One limitation would be that the case studies, particularly the ones on HP and Dell,
were published in 2004 and 2003 respectively. Although research has been done to
find out whether and how these companies changed/added to their KM initiatives
since then, there is no guarantee that all the information on this is (freely) available.
Another limitation is regarding the information available on the organisations’ KM
strategies, as it may not all be available (and free), and the authors of the ECCH case
studies might have had limitations concerning what to publish.
Another limitation was that the chosen companies were all global, and to what
extent (if any) can the research be extended to small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
did not make the scope of this study.
5.3 Recommendations for Further Research
One recommendation would be to explore how the KM framework developed
applies to SMEs.
Another is to interview (knowledge) managers from IBM, HP and Dell, to find out
more about their KM strategies, especially regarding advantages and disadvantages.
A last recommendation would be to analyse companies that implemented systems-
transactional and spatial KM, as these two were not present in the chosen companies.
Word count: 20,020.
80
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APPENDIX 1: IBM – KM Initiatives – Related Dates
Date Event
1914 Thomas J. Watson Sr. (“father of modern IBM”) becomes general manager
of Computing, Tabulating and Recording Company (CTR) 1924 Thomas J. Watson Sr. renames CTR as “International Business Machines”
(IBM) April 1993 Louis Gerstner becomes CEO of IBM 1994 IBM’s first KM initiatives:
Intellectual Capital Management (ICM): “reuse of knowledge assets” KnowledgeView: “asset management program” including “discussion
forums, resources, intellectual capital etc.” 1995 IBM developed “communities of practice”, known as “knowledge
networks” 1997 Louis Gerstner mentions that he wants to turn IBM into “the world’s
premier KM company”; “to turn itself into a KM driven company, IBM
upgrades its IT infrastructure” May 2001 ManagerJam (virtual environment, on the corporate intranet) session
among IBM managers 2002 IBM starts making use of e-meetings/Web conferences;
IBM starts using instant messaging 2003 ValuesJam (on the IBM intranet, forums) session among IBM employees 2004 IBM starts “a portal for online training, called On-demand Workplace
(ODW)”, which included Learning@IBM October 2004 WorldJam (forums) session between IBM employees Spring 2005 “IBM bloggers begin using Wiki for creating guidelines for blogging” 2005 HabitatJam (forums) session, with the Government of Canada and UN-
HABITAT 2005 IBM wins the KMWorld Awards, in the KM Reality category 2006 InnovationJam (forums) session among IBM employees, business partners
and clients 2006 IBM launches QED (Quick and Easily Done) Wiki April 2006 BlogCentral (blogs) has 23,000 users and over 3,500 active blogs Mid-2006 Over 80% of IBM employees were registered with BluePages, “a corporate
directory with instant messaging and email facilities” Mid-2006 There are approximately 27,000 active Team Rooms in CollaborationCentral
(collaboration forums) 2007 IBM launches Dogear, a social bookmarking system November 2007 IBM wins the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Award
(alongside HP and other 19 companies) Early 2008 IBM has approximately 100,000 Wiki users October 2008 InnovationJam (forums) session between IBM employees and employees
from more than 1000 companies
Source: Gupta et al, 2009.
87
APPENDIX 2: Dell – KM Initiatives – Related Dates
Date Event
Early 1980s Michael Dell – “founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell” - starts offering “IBM
clones” PCs May 1984 Dell is founded 1985 Dell starts “assembling computers of its own design and brand” 1986 Dell enters the “large companies” market June 1987 Dell enters “the European market” 1991 The Internet launches 1992 Dell is “for the first time included as one of the Fortune 500 largest
companies in the world” 1993 The first Web browser – Mosaic - launches 1989-1994
“a problem of people’s mindsets when it came to taking advantage of
information” is observed; Dell acquires business analytic and reporting
tools; and the company starts initiatives to “create an info-centric culture
across the organization” June 1994 The website www.dell.com launches 1994 DellTalk bulletin board – “a networking and information exchange
community” for customers; Dell intranet – for the employees; “global communications network linking every employee”
1995 Mention of “Dell’s asset management team” 1998 Valuechain.Dell.com – extranet site for suppliers 1998 Dell further invests in its IT infrastructure, including a “financial portal” to
be completed at the end of 2002 2001 Dell ranks “number one in global PC market share” “for the first time” 2003 “Fortune” ranks Dell “as the world’s fourth most admired company”
Source: Marchand, D.; Chung, R.; Kettinger, W., 2003.
88
APPENDIX 3: Hewlett-Packard– KM Initiatives – Related
Dates
Date Event
1939 Hewlett-Packard is founded 1957 HP adopts a multi-divisional (decentralized) configuration, with each
division having great autonomy The 1970s Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard (YHP) complains about poor quality products
sent from the U.S. to Japan for assembly 1977 YHP adopts Total Quality Control (TQC) Early 1979 YHP records great performance improvement 1982 YHP wins the Deming Prize for quality 1981-1984 YHP is HP’s highest ranking division In the early
1980s Japanese quality products threat US companies, including HP
In the 1980s HP production changes drastically, from batch to high-volume and high-
quality 1988 The first Quality Maturity System (QMS) reviews are done
QMS 1.0 was introduced by the then CEO, John Young 1987/8-1991 QMS 1.0 – verifies conformity with Total Quality Control (TQC) Early 1990s Richard LeVitt, the then Corporate Director of Quality, considers Japanese
quality practices (specifically TQC) to be obsolete 1992/3 Lew Platt becomes chairman, president and CEO of HP
Lew Platt and the COO Dean Morton enforce “hoshin management” as an
annual planning tool throughout all HP divisions 1992-1995 QMS 2.0 – focuses on Total Quality Management (TQM) Early-mid-
1990s HP starts to make initiatives to re-invent itself, as trends changed drastically
from the 1980s; HP divisions are given even greater autonomy, as mid-level
units between corporate and the divisions are reduced; Japan is no longer
a threat 1994 The Research and Development (R&D) Committee, chaired by Richard
LeVitt, is created Richard LeVitt also creates the Quality Roles Task Force
1994-1995 The “new quality vision” is developed, including “skill sets required for
quality managers” under the new standard (p. 7) 1994-1997 Annual Hoshins for the goal of achieving and sustaining leadership 1995-2003 QMS 3.0 1996/7 More than 400 formal QMS reviews have been done in 70% of HP divisions,
using either QMS 1.0 or QMS 2.0
Source: Cole, R. and Lee, G., 2004.
89
APPENDIX 4: KM Analytical Framework– Detailed
Description
SYSTEMS-TRANSACTIONAL KM
Strategy Codification
Focus/Aim Technology/Knowledge bases
Critical Success Factors Content validation and Incentives to provide content
“Philosophy” Codification
KM Applications Case-Based Reasoning (CBR); Help Desk Applications;
Customer Service Applications; Order Entry Applications;
Service Agent Support Applications
Enabling Technologies Expert Systems; Cognitive Technologies; Semantic
Networks; Rule-based Expert Systems; Probability
Networks; Rule Induction, Decision Trees; Geospatial
Information Systems
ANALYTICAL KM
Strategy Codification
Focus Technology
Critical Success Factors Content validation and Incentives to provide content
“Philosophy” Codification
KM Applications Data Warehousing; Data Mining; Business Intelligence;
Management Information Systems; Decisions Support
Systems; Customer Relationship Management (CRM);
Competitive Intelligence
Enabling Technologies Intelligent Agents; Web Crawlers; Relational and Object
DBMS; Neural Computing; Push Technologies; Data
Analysis and Reporting Tools
90
CARTOGRAPHIC KM
Strategy Codification or Personalization
Focus/Aim Maps/Knowledge directories
Critical Success Factors Culture/Incentives to share knowledge and Networks
“Philosophy” Connectivity
KM Applications Intellectual Property
Enabling Technologies Knowledge Maps
ENGINEERING-PROCESS KM
Strategy Codification or Personalization
Focus/Aim Processes/Knowledge flows
Critical Success Factors Knowledge learning and Information unrestricted
distribution
“Philosophy” Capability
KM Applications Total Quality Management (TQM); Benchmarking; Best
practices; Quality Management; Business Process
(Re)Engineering (BPR); Process Improvement; Process
Automation; Lessons Learned; Methodology; SEIICMM,
ISO9XXX, Six Sigma
Enabling Technologies Workflow Management; Process Modelling Tools
COMMERCIAL-ASSET KM
Strategy Codification or Personalization
Focus/Aim Income/Knowledge Assets
Critical Success Factors Specialist teams and Institutionalized process
“Philosophy” Commercialization
KM Applications Intellectual Property; Document Management;
Knowledge Valuation; Knowledge Repositories; Content
Management
Enabling Technologies Document Management Tools; Search Engines;
Knowledge Maps; Library Systems
91
ORGANIZATIONAL-INNOVATION KM
Strategy Personalization
Focus/Aim Networks/Knowledge Pooling
Critical Success Factors Sociable culture and Knowledge intermediaries
“Philosophy” Collaboration
KM Applications Communities; Discussion Forums; Networking; Virtual
teams; Research and Development; Multi-disciplined
Teams
Enabling Technologies Groupware; e-Mail; Chat Rooms; Video Conferencing;
Search Engines; Voice Mail; Bulletin Boards; Push
Technologies; Simulation Technologies
SPATIAL KM
Strategy Personalization
Focus/Aim Space/Knowledge Exchange
Critical Success Factors Design for purpose and Encouragement
“Philosophy” Contactivity
KM Applications Access and Representational Tools
STRATEGIC-DEVELOPMENTAL KM
Strategy Personalization
Focus/Aim Mindset/Knowledge Capabilities
Critical Success Factors Rhetoric and Artifacts
“Philosophy” Consciousness
KM Applications Skills Development; Staff Competencies; Learning;
Teaching; Training
Enabling Technologies Computer-based Training; Online Training
SOURCES: Hansen et al, 1999; Earl, 2001, p. 217; Binney, 2001,
p. 35, 38.
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