This thesis's purpose was to gain a deeper understanding of how organizations create knowledge retention (KR), both proactively (day-to-day basis) and reactively (when an employee decides to resign), to avoid knowledge loss. A qualitative multiple case study was conducted through semi-structured interviews, with eight respondents from eight different organizations. An analytical model based on Levy’s (2011) KR framework and Nonaka and Takeuchi's (1995) knowledge spiral model was developed as a tool to understand the KR process in practice. The study found that all studied organizations worked proactively to retain knowledge, either structured or unstructured. The respondents with a structured, proactive KR process did not apply a reactive KR process, showing that they are more prepared for handling potential knowledge loss when employees resign. The respondents that did not apply a structured, proactive KR process applied a reactive knowledge retention process, where the main explanation for this was lack of time or unawareness of the process. Furthermore, no clear groups emerged in the empirical material as the companies faced different challenges at each stage of the analytical model. Lastly, the study concludes that these findings could be particularly relevant for organizations seeking to conduct KR processes to avoid losing valuable knowledge.

Att arbeta i projekt är en allt vanligare arbetsform som tillskrivs vara mer effektiv än den traditionella. Trots detta har projektorganisationer svårt att dra lärdomar av tidigare misstag, därför riskeras de att återupprepas i andra projekt. Det finns påtagliga brister i inhämtningen av kunskap från tidigare projekt, men också i lagrandet av dessa erfarenheter. Utvärdering är ett verktyg som syftar till att reflektera och samla in erfarenheter och kunskaper som genererats i ett projekt. Det är också en förutsättning för att de ska kunna vidareförmedlas. Syftet med studien är därför att ta reda på hur en projektorganisation använder sig av utvärdering för lärande mellan projekt. För att genomföra detta kontaktades en multinationell projektorganisation som hädanefter kallas CS. Vi genomförde en fallstudie där både intervjuer med projektledare och utvärderingsmaterial inhämtades. Det empiriska materialet analyserades och jämfördes med den teoretiska referensramen vilket resulterade i två modeller. Den första modellen beskriver det inter-projektuella lärandet som ligger till grund för kunskapsutbytet mellan projekt. Den andra modellen visar mer ingående utvärderingens kritiska punkter från ett projekt till ett annat. Studien stärker att utvärdering och lärande mellan projekt är ett eftersatt område i projektorganisationer. De uppfattas ofta som tråkiga, ostrukturerade och som att de saknar mottagare. Även andra kritiska punkter i processen som är vitala för att kunskap ska spridas mellan projekt har uppmärksammats. De är att ledningen stöttar genomförandet och inhämtandet av tidigare utvärderingsmaterial, att databasen är användarvänlig och att nätverk aktivt används. En reflekterande utvärdering bidrar till utökad individuell kunskap, men även utförligare dokument som kan lagras i organisationen. Detta är något som långsiktigt leder till kunskapsutveckling för organisationer. Studien visar också att kunskapsspridningen mellan parallellt pågående projekt varken prioriteras i forskning eller inom organisationer. Det finns däremot stor utvecklingspotential inom detta område. / Program: Civilekonomprogrammet

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:26:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Andre Eduardo Miranda dos Santos.pdf: 1807322 bytes, checksum: 7f50ddc0b91b7f1ac5122ffcdf2d22d5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-05-31 / Great attention has been dedicated to knowledge administration thematic in the last years. Articles and books have been published and companies have been increasing the investments in that study field, that presents multidisciplinary relationship with other themes, such as information, human resources administration and organizational behavior systems. Inserted in an environment of competition and competitiveness, great companies coexist with the constant variation of the demand for their products, turning essential the existence of a daily activity foreseeing future situations, in order to maximize the outcome and to provide value to the business. Such an activity is situated in a field of study which goes by the area of marketing and production planning. In this sense, the objective of this study was to list the knowledge management, under a Processual perspective, in the demand planning activity, in an exploratory nature research carried out in five different companies, pertaining companies to five different sectors, characterized as a multi-case case study. The evidences were acquired by means of interviews, observation and document analysis, where content analysis was employed for analyzing and interpreting data. The outcome revealed the presence of elements having explicit, tacit and cultural knowledge in the demand planning activity: information technology tools the and documents, experience of professionals, means for transferring knowledge, collective interaction, social relationships and corporative vision what directs the business. In addition, the creation, transfer, storage and knowledge use processes were also considered as an outcome of the research, standing out the different formal meetings scheduled for knowledge exchange and the "knowledge combination" element, characterized by the interaction among the people during the process of knowledge creation and proposed in the Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization process. / Grande atenção tem sido dada à temática gestão do conhecimento nos últimos anos. Artigos e livros têm sido publicados e empresas têm aumentado os investimentos nesse campo de estudo, que apresenta multidisciplinariedade com outros temas, como sistemas de informação, gestão de recursos humanos e comportamento organizacional. Inseridas em um ambiente de concorrência e competitividade, grandes empresas convivem com a constante variação da demanda de seus produtos, o que torna essencial a existência de uma atividade diária de previsão de situações futuras, a fim de se maximizar os resultados e de se fornecer valor ao negócio. Tal atividade se situa em um campo de estudo que passa pela área de marketing e planejamento de produção. Nesse sentido, o objetivo do presente estudo foi relacionar a gestão do conhecimento, sob uma perspectiva processual, na atividade de planejamento de demanda, em uma pesquisa de caráter exploratório realizada em cinco empresas diferentes, pertencentes a cinco setores diferentes, caracterizada como um estudo de multicasos. As evidências foram perquiridas por meio de entrevistas, observação e análise de documento, sendo que, para análise e interpretação dos dados, foi empregada a análise de conteúdo. Os resultados revelaram a presença de elementos de conhecimento explícito, tácito e cultural na atividade de planejamento de demanda: ferramentas de tecnologia da informação e documentos, experiência dos profissionais, meios de transferência do conhecimento, interação coletiva, relações sociais e visão corporativa que direciona o negócio empresa. Além disso, os processos de criação, transferência, armazenamento e de uso do conhecimento também foram considerados no resultado da pesquisa, destacando-se os diferentes encontros formais agendados para a troca de conhecimento e o elemento de "combinação do conhecimento , caracterizado pela interação entre as pessoas durante a criação do conhecimento e proposto no processo de Socialização, Externalização, Combinação e Internalização.

Knowledge management is seen as a hot topic in order for organizations to become effective and utilize the knowledge residing within the organization. The most important factor in knowledge management is believed to be the knowledge transfer, which is the process of transferring knowledge between two parties. A context in which knowledge and knowledge transfer are especially important is within the best practice framework ‘ITIL’ and IT-service organizations. Therefore, the purpose with this study is to analyze how knowledge is transferred through information systems in an ITIL organization, and how the transfer process can be further understood by incorporating individual perspectives on knowledge. Besides that, our purpose is to identify factors influencing the knowledge transfer from both the organizations and the ITIL framework. The reason for this is that knowledge transfer through information systems in an ITIL context is rather underexplored, previous research regarding this is mainly focusing on putting knowledge in repositories and make it available, which is believed to create certain implications regarding the individual perspective in the creation and transfer of knowledge through information systems. These implications are something that has not been explored, which is a knowledge gap we intend to fill with this thesis. That is why we have constructed three research questions regarding how the organizations understand what valuable knowledge is, what factors that is influencing their knowledge transfer, and how these previously individual aspects can be further understood by applying the boundary object theory on knowledge transfer through information systems. From a multi case study with semi structured interviews we could collect a valuable collection of empirical data, that was collected from six respondents representing three organizations. By applying the interpretive and social constructivist research philosophy with an abductive methodological approach, previous research and the boundary object theory in combination with the theory of knowledge creation we could analyze our empirical data. Our study shows that the perspective on valuable knowledge is something with direct relation to ITIL, and highly connected to what its contribution is to the core business that the IT-service organization is helping. Valuable knowledge is also seen as stored knowledge. We can from our study also see that there are four predominant forces influencing the knowledge transfer process. We identified that the overall perspective on what knowledge is in the organization, how and what the organization values as knowledge, the ITIL framework and their knowledge management strategy directly influenced knowledge transfer. Our main finding in this study is that when organizations are transferring knowledge through information systems the individual perspective on both knowledge, knowledge creation and the knowledge transfer is one of the most important to keep in mind. The knowledge in the information systems is a way to communicate among individuals, and a way to translate one individual’s knowledge to another, hence is the individual creating the knowledge an important factor to acknowledge. We can see that aspects such as experiences, skills, insights, purposes, perspectives and contextual understandings highly influence the knowledge being created, hence the possibility to create rich knowledge at the receiver of knowledge. These aspects also influence whether the stored knowledge has any tacit elements, which seems to facilitate learning more for the receiving individual.

The aim of this study was to conduct a thorough theoretical study on the relevant aspects involved in knowledge management and organizational learning, and thence assess the level of organisational learning within the ferrometallurgical industry. From the outcomes of the assessment, recommendations to improve the state of affairs were to be made. Knowledge can be defined as actionable information. The creation, acquisition, sharing and leveraging of knowledge in today's industries are critical. Knowledge is now termed the fourth productive resource, and some authors claim, with some justification, that the widespread knowledge within a company is the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. With this in mind, it is obvious that companies need to nurture knowledge creation and effective utilisation thereof in order to meet organisational goals. Knowledge can be codified if it is explicit, but needs to be transferred using personalisation if it is tacit. Implicitness of tacit knowledge further confounds the issue. Knowledge management practices underpin the process of organisational learning. The level of organisational learning within the ferrometallurgical industry in South Africa was assessed, using a survey questionnaire obtained from the Harvard Business School. The results show that the industry lags behind the medians in the ten constructs measured, and much work will be required to significantly improve the situation. Key areas of concern are in the areas of psychological safety, time for reflection, education and training, and collection of information. As a consequence, a practical strategy for improving the state of knowledge management and organisational learning in the ferrometallurgical industry was developed. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

The aim of this study was to conduct a thorough theoretical study on the relevant aspects involved in knowledge management and organizational learning, and thence assess the level of organisational learning within the ferrometallurgical industry. From the outcomes of the assessment, recommendations to improve the state of affairs were to be made. Knowledge can be defined as actionable information. The creation, acquisition, sharing and leveraging of knowledge in today's industries are critical. Knowledge is now termed the fourth productive resource, and some authors claim, with some justification, that the widespread knowledge within a company is the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. With this in mind, it is obvious that companies need to nurture knowledge creation and effective utilisation thereof in order to meet organisational goals. Knowledge can be codified if it is explicit, but needs to be transferred using personalisation if it is tacit. Implicitness of tacit knowledge further confounds the issue. Knowledge management practices underpin the process of organisational learning. The level of organisational learning within the ferrometallurgical industry in South Africa was assessed, using a survey questionnaire obtained from the Harvard Business School. The results show that the industry lags behind the medians in the ten constructs measured, and much work will be required to significantly improve the situation. Key areas of concern are in the areas of psychological safety, time for reflection, education and training, and collection of information. As a consequence, a practical strategy for improving the state of knowledge management and organisational learning in the ferrometallurgical industry was developed. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

Dans la nouvelle économie caractérisée par des propriétés telles que la mondialisation, l'intangibilité et l'interconnectivité, les organisations éducatives sont nécessaires pour surmonter les nouveaux défis, en particulier la nature changeante du dynamisme accru et de la complexité des exigences des organisations éducatives. L'une des philosophies stratégiques actuelles aidant les organisations éducatives à développer des capacités stratégiques traitant de l'incertitude est la gestion des connaissances (GC). Grâce à l'acquisition systématique, la création, le partage et l'utilisation des connaissances, les organisations développent, renouvellent et exploitent leurs ressources fondées sur le savoir, leur permettant ainsi d'être proactifs et adaptables aux changements extérieurs et d'atteindre le succès concurrentiel. Apparaissant comme un moyen puissant de maintien, de la compétitivité de l'organisation, GC a été largement étudiée et ce à partir de différentes perspectives. Toutefois, seul un nombre limité de recherches ont visé les ressources des organisations éducatives pour examiner empiriquement les relations entre l'infrastructure GC et les différentes stratégies pour investir les actifs humains. Pendant ce temps, la recherche sur les approches GC à partir d'une approche dynamique a été la plupart du temps de nature conceptuelle. Il est proposé ici que l'omission d'appliquer le processus GC peut entraver la contribution intégrée, potentiellement utile aux stratégies organisationnelles afin d'améliorer l'éducation des principaux éléments qui constituent les approches GC. En outre, un examen de la littérature montre que les preuves les plus empiriques ont été obtenues dans le cadre des pays développés. La possibilité que ces modèles pourraient être adoptés dans les organisations éducatives pour répondre aux spécificités des pays en développement a reçu très peu d'attention à ce jour. En se basant sur la théorie de l'apprentissage social prolongé par les approches basées sur la capacité des connaissances dynamiques, cette recherche développe un modèle théorique d'intégration de la capacité GC. L'examen empirique des relations hypothétiques entre les variables est réalisé au moyen de questionnaires de sondage en Arabie Saoudite. Pour l'étude pilote, 30 projets de questionnaires ont été distribués directement aux cadres supérieurs participants au forum « société Global Knowledge 2013 » qui a eu lieu au centre du Roi Abdulaziz pour la Culture Mondiale du groupe ARAMCO Arabie Saoudite, le 9-10 Décembre 2103. [...] / In the New Economy characterized by properties such as globalization, intangibility and inter-connectivity, educational organizations are required to overcome the new challenges, especially the changing nature of the enhanced dynamism and complexity of the requirements from the educational organizations. One of the current strategic philosophies assisting educational organizations to develop strategic capabilities dealing with uncertainty is knowledge management (KM). Through the systematic acquisition, creation, sharing, and use of knowledge, organizations develop, renew and exploit their knowledge-based resources, thereby allowing them to be proactive and adaptable to external changes and attain competitive success. Emerging as a powerful means for sustaining organizational competitiveness, KM has been widely investigated from different perspectives. However, only a limited number of researches have adopted the resource based view of the educational organizations to empirically examine the relationships between KM infrastructure and the different strategies for investing human assets. Meanwhile, research on KM approaches from a dynamic capability approach has been mostly conceptual in nature. It is proposed here that a failure to apply KM approaches may hinder the potentially valuable integrated contribution to organizational strategies for enhancing education of the major components that constitute KM approaches. In addition, a review of the literature shows that most empirical evidence has been obtained in the context of developed countries. The possibility that such models might be adopted in educational organizations to fit the specificities of the developing countries has received very little attention to date. Relying on social learning theory extended by the knowledge and dynamic capability based approaches, this research develops an integrative theoretical mode) of KM capability. Empirical examination of the hypothesized relationships among variables is conducted by means of questionnaire surveys in Saudi Arabia. For the pilot study, 30 draft questionnaires were directly distributed to senior managers participating in the Global Knowledge Society Forum 2013 took place in King Abdul Aziz Center for World Culture, ARAMCO Saudi Arabia, during the period of9-10 December 2103. The responses returned with complete data were assessed, using factor analysis and reliability testing, to refine and finalize the questionnaire administered in the main survey.

Informationsteknik (IT) har en betydelsefull roll i dagens samhälle och ett av de mest framgångsrika verktygen för att inhämta, bearbeta och bevara data och information är olika typer av IT-system. Studier visar att ett väletablerat IT-system kan möjliggöra kunskapsöverföring inom en organisation. En välkänd bransch som har utnyttjat de konkurrensfördelar som kunskap och kunskapsöverföring kan ge är konsultbranschen. Uppsatsen syftar därmed att studera vilken roll IT-system kan ha vid kunskapsöverföring och studien genomfördes således på ett konsultföretag i Stockholmsregionen. Studiens empiri inhämtades från sju intervjuer med anställda vid företaget. Uppsatsens slutsats visade att ITsystemen har en fundamental roll men att systemen inte används uteslutande vid kunskapsöverföring då även sociala interaktioner används i processen. / Information technology (IT) has gained an increasingly important role in today's society and one of the most successful tools for retrieving, processing and preserving data and information are different types of IT systems. Studies show that a well-established IT system can enable knowledge transfer within an organization. A well-known industry that has taken advantage of the competitive advantages that knowledge and knowledge transfer can provide is the consulting industry. The aim of the thesis is thus to study the role of IT systems in the process of knowledge transfer and the study was conducted at a consulting company in the Stockholm region. The empirical material was obtained from seven interviews with employees at the company. The conclusion of the thesis showed that IT systems have a fundamental role but that the systems are not used exclusively for knowledge transfer since social interactions are also used in the process.

The theme of this diploma thesis is Knowledge Management that is becoming the focus of business companies. The theoretical part of the work is divided into several chapters that discuss the basic principles of Knowledge Management. The aim of this work is to describe the principle of knowledge management and create a basic draft of the knowledge base for the KPMG company. In the introductory part of the work, terms commonly used in knowledge management are explained. Further, the knowledge capital of the company, types of knowledge management and the related knowledge strategies are described. Second half of the theoretical part concerns the responsibilities, tasks and roles in knowledge management. The last chapters of the theoretical part describe the individual phases of knowledge management introduction in a company. The practical part of this thesis is focused at analysis of KPMG company knowledge management and design of a knowledge base that can substantially reduce the time necessary for completion of certain deliverables. The chapter concerns mainly with description of the system architecture of the knowledge base, that the author has designed for the KPMG company.

The thesis defines the basic concepts of data, information and knowledge for which monitors the mutual ties. It uses them to define the dynamic process of knowledge that will further clarify the use of cognitive aspects of work with knowledge of the individual, group or organization. It follows the knowledge management processes that attach to the creation and knowledge transfer opportunities. An important part of this work is to assess the role of knowledge in information systems. In particular, it deals with the role tacit knowledge in decision support systems. For each types of systems observes their ability to work with knowledge and information, the suitability of the type of solved problems and their flexibility. Finally, considering the possibilities of further developments in relation to solving complex dynamic problems.