**4. Two worlds of the knowledge-based enterprise**

In Strategic Alignment Model (Henderson, Venkatraman, 1990) two interrelated components of the enterprise are defined: 1) Business domain and 2) IT domain. According to the definition of the Knowledge-Based Enterprise, another two important components of the enterprise management are identified: Knowledge domain and Data domain. All these four components are interrelated domains (see Fig. 16), which have to be taken into account

is complemented with additional structural elements – business *knowledge and IT knowledge* 

To sum up, business and IT domains of SAM can be decomposed into three levels of management hierarchy: strategic management level, knowledge management level, and

The management processes on the strategic level and knowledge management level are *knowledge –driven* because these top level management activities require particular knowledge about strategies and management methods, and etc. The management processes on the business and IT management and control level require definite (time related) data about the state of business and IT processes, thus this level of management essentially is

Knowledge-centric enterprise, as any other contemporary organization, possibly uses the integrated data repositories which are presented in the SAM as the Enterprise *Data* 

Even if knowledge management activities of Knowledge-Centric Enterprise are under control, there is a possibility for the knowledge flow bottlenecks left, because the valuable knowledge two interrelated enterprise domains required for the management solutions about *(i.e. Business domain, IT domain*) typically resides in the heads of the managers and employees, in the unstructured documents etc. As the business-IT alignment is continuous decision making process, it should be supported with reliable information (*Real World d*ata and *digital* data) and knowledge (*Real World* knowledge only) accessible across the

In Strategic Alignment Model (Henderson, Venkatraman, 1990) two interrelated components of the enterprise are defined: 1) Business domain and 2) IT domain. According to the definition of the Knowledge-Based Enterprise, another two important components of the enterprise management are identified: Knowledge domain and Data domain. All these four components are interrelated domains (see Fig. 16), which have to be taken into account

*management components* (see Fig. 9).

Fig. 9. The Knowledge-Centric Enterprise structure

**4. Two worlds of the knowledge-based enterprise** 

business management&control level.

*repositories* component (Fig.9).

*data-driven.*

enterprise.

when transforming business enterprise into Knowledge-Based Business Enterprise (Gudas, Brundzaite, 2006a)**.**

The scheme presented in Fig. 10 sums up findings made in the chapter. The peculiarity of this abstraction is that it clearly separates the Knowledge domain from Data domain, in contrast to other conceptual enterprise models (e.g. presented in (Hettinger, 2003) or (Iyer, Gottlieb, 2004). For instance, the well-known ISA framework (Zachman, Sowa, 1992) does not concern knowledge domain at all. Though comparing ISA model with the presented abstraction of the Knowledge-Based Enterprise domains, different purposes and tasks of the ISA and Enterprise Knowledge Modelling framework should be noted.

The concept of the *knowledge base* is also used in the sense of computerized meta-data repository when implementing large-scale data management and business intelligence systems in the contemporary organizations. Meta-data repository helps to provide business data as well as data about data for business and for IT departments and to make adequate decisions regarding data management in organizations. Contemporary organizations need to manage not only data, but the whole data-information-knowledge continuum; this is why the role and structure of the enterprise repository or enterprise knowledge base have to change adequately too (Gudas, Brundzaite, 2006a)**.** 

Fig. 10. Two worlds of the knowledge-based enterprise

The concept of computerized knowledge base become important with the emergence of such intensively computer-based organizational forms as supply chains, virtual organizations etc. Organizations require for having not only shared data bases in virtual environment, but also knowledge about those data, as well as about the data structure and semantics; knowledge about its infrastructure and processes; process management up to strategic intentions.

The solid lines in Fig. 10 represent the knowledge management activities which are used to assure integration of the enterprise knowledge base into overall enterprise management and development framework, as well as support of inter-domain alignment tasks. Knowledge management activity has to be managed and explicitly modelled either (Gudas, Brundzaite, 2006a).
