Grigory Sokolov plays Prokofiev piano sonata No. 7

“Sokolov is for many the greatest pianist alive today. … Sokolov is a pianistic Dostoyevsky, his music-making vast in scope, visionary and revelatory, squeezing out every last drop of meaning.”
— International Piano, Sept. 2006

Assessing the Impact of KM on Organisational Practice

Assessing the Impact of KM on Organisational Practice, by Sandra Moffett and Anne Hinds
Abstract: With the emergence of the knowledge intensive industry, where organisations rely on the knowledge of their staff for competitive advantage (Lustri et al., 2007), KM has become key for business success (Mu-jung et al., 2007). KM, once seen as a fad (Ramsey, 1996) is now an integral business function (Zhou and Fink, 2003) in both traditional and internet-based businesses (Borges Tiago et al., 2007) to the extent that KM is now viewed essential for profit (Yang, 2008). Despite the great progress made in KM over the past decade (Omega Editorial, 2009) much confusion exists around the practical implementation of knowledge-orientated programmes, resulting in either an overemphasis on technology to the exclusion of adequate people/quality planning, or, strong people/quality programmes from a knowledge perspective, hindered by inadequate enabling technologies. For example, organisations question how current KM models, frameworks and programmes can be applied across all organisations uniformly? If changes are necessary to the approach adopted by an organisation, what are these changes and are the drivers behind the change approaches largely implementation modifications or are there more fundamental issues to be resolved? Are the most important issues (King, 2007) being addressed? How is KM success defined? (Jennex and Croasdell, 2007) Considering the large investment capital expended by many firms in KM systems (Curley, 1998) and the growing number of companies that see KM as potentially helping them survive and compete, there is a need for more definitive and comprehensive studies in this field for systematic empirical research and in-depth rich case studies. This paper presents results of empirical research undertaken in early 2009 with 588 UK companies. Research purpose is to assess the impact of the MeCTIP model [Moffett, 2000; Moffett et al., 2002, 2003] on UK companies to identify key factors for successful implementation, practice and development of KM. The research employs the ‘Benchmarking KM’ online survey tool. This paper focuses on research methodology and initial survey results using statistical analysis techniques such as descriptives and factor analysis. Avenues for further research are identified.