**7.1. Pillar of people**

The descriptive statistical results indicated that the gap between espoused theory (regard‐ ing their perceived importance) and theory in use (regarding the inclination practice) was further evaluated. **Figure 8** illustrates the correlation coefficients of the three major pillars. The perceived importance of KM pillars showed a relatively strong relationship with the KM practice (0.80). Most of the organizations are consistent with what they believe and commu‐ nicate to others in regard to their KM strategies. No obvious disparity exists between their degree of championing KM and the degree they engage in KM. Similarly, the results dem‐ onstrated a strong relationship between the KM practice and organizational performance, with a correlation coefficient of 0.87. The KM strategy steered by management is important in promoting the synergistic coordination of different organizational resources to achieve

**Figure 7.** Organizational performance by hybrid strategy and process‐oriented strategy.

**Figure 8.** Correlation of perceived importance, practice, and organizational performance.

The preliminary findings reveal that management and employees have variable perceptions toward the relative importance of the three KM pillars. Their inclined perceptions influence

desirable organizational results.

78 Knowledge Management Strategies and Applications

**7. Discussion and KM in the future**

The attitude of the top management toward KM serves as an explicit gauge for an organi‐ zation‐wide KM activity. Steered by the top management, a KM task force can be created to symbolize their dedication and enthusiasm toward their employees [8]. The key values and affirmative perception toward KM, such as knowledge is a fluid and growing asset; knowledge is not confined as personal power; and knowledge is best valued if it is shared, can be cultivated, and institutionalized to all employees. The vision to embody the signifi‐ cance of KM can attract additional dedication from employees when KM initiative is in its infant stage.

Centered as the frontrunner in KM community, the top management can stretch KM bound‐ ary and embody the KM significance to different departments. They can identify early adopters with enthusiasm for KM processes and involve them in propagating the KM vision through connections and interactions. Thereafter, the community can be further extended to diverse work groups/departments and encourage members to bring in a constructive dis‐ ruption toward the status quo and stimulate other new ideas. The bond among people can be strengthened through the participation of knowledge workers characterized by different roles (e.g., novice, regulars, and experts) in the community. Regular meetings to exchange ideas or articulate competent skills to members are beneficial to peer learning.

Within the community, KM activists, including the top management and employees, can advance the KM perception as a spiritual KM culture. Fostering a knowledge‐friendly cul‐ ture with unwritten norms and beliefs is crucial because turning KM visible to all organi‐ zational members requires time. Organizations can encourage people to experiment with different ideas to develop a new working process that is in parallel with their autonomy in task. Such working atmosphere can facilitate open communication channels and knowl‐ edge‐sharing sessions at both formal and informal setups, such as conducting a bimonthly good work practice sharing allowing employees at all levels to explicate or solicit feedback of their work practices.

## **7.2. Pillar of process**

KM processes involve both formal and informal dynamics, ranging from casual conversa‐ tions in the hallway to socialization regarding work processes over departmental meals to pre‐arranged, focused discussion sessions held in meeting rooms. Organizations can devote extra efforts to engage major processes, including acquisition and capture, conversion and organization, storage and dissemination as well as creation and usage [27]. Further actions are required to interweave the KM processes holistically because such knowledge assets can be an added value to facilitate informed decision making and strategy.

Knowledge is intricate with its multiple facets [1, 2, 28]. Management must identify its paucity and presence at individual, group, and organization contexts. Therefore, employees are encour‐ aged to tap in diverse sources, acquire the critical knowledge, such as core competencies and know‐how residing in a particular employee's mind, or capture the knowledge embedded within a particular organization process, or deduce good practices adopted from outside organizations.

Efficiently and effectively conversing and organizing knowledge into the appropriate format for easy access and retrieval are crucial in the organizational KM agenda. Explicit knowledge, such as text‐based reports and procedural manuals, is relatively communicable to others. Thus, experts can explicate their knowledge and codify them in a structured form. By con‐ trast, tacit knowledge, such as capability to understand and to read the cues from customers' propensity to purchase, cannot be verbalized and articulated entirely to others. Organizations may have to devote extra resources to convert them into demonstrative video or narrative good practices that can be learned by knowledge seekers through a different mode.

Sharing is one of the most challenging processes if knowledge is confined as a personal asset rather than a social capital in the organization. Equipped with a sound incentive system (cov‐ ering both monetary and non‐monetary recognition), the infant KM stage may progress with a mandatory sharing from experts or experienced staff. During the growth stage of the KM program, sharing exercise can be regularly conducted with the active participation from the top management. Further sharing can be boosted on a voluntary basis, with many employees sharing and exchanging their good practices reciprocally through an informal setup, such as social conversation, or through a formal route, such as documented publications [28].

Knowledge creation is occasionally a spontaneous process, where innovative ideas are not con‐ fined to the domain expertise or experienced colleagues. It can also be an emergence of a novel idea or one that adds value to reconfigure a current idea or enhance working practices, which, in turn, can be applied in new contexts. Management can encourage employees to explore their ideas playfully through trial‐and‐errors for invention. Furthermore, management can provide extra "time" resources to support creation, such as releasing employees from work to cross‐fer‐ tilize ideas with colleagues from different disciplines.

### **7.3. Pillar of technology**

In some organizations, knowledge management is closely associated with sophisticated sys‐ tems, enormous database, and advanced infrastructure. Management must realize that the pres‐ ence of KMS offers no guarantee that the users will automatically come nor hoard knowledge and skills from the repositories. KMS is capitalized as an effective and useful conduit when users interact, learn, and collaborate with others and harness reusable knowledge for their own work situations and processes [18, 29].

The perceptions held by the KMS users affect the extent of system usage, such as perceived ease of use and usefulness. Therefore, management can designate the IT staff for involving end users to participate in the KMS design and development process. The genuine needs in knowledge representation, expectation of feature‐rich interface, and potential problems in the evolving knowledge repositories can be directly solicited. The involvement from end users reinforces the commitment and satisfaction when the system is launched because KMS is developed "for" them.

Undoubtedly, KMS enables organizations to be more agile and fluid because skills, competen‐ cies, and ideas can be stored, accessed, retrieved, and disseminated to the right people, at the right time, and at the right place [11, 12]. It presumably connects employees on a potentially fruitful platform that enables them to access, integrate, and generate knowledge. Therefore, management must be cautious to avoid putting excessive efforts in preserving and storing knowledge assets as stock in the repositories. Employees are encouraged to keep knowledge "alive" through a continuous review, updating, disposal, and sharing. Regular evaluations of system effectiveness, such as portal design and relevance of knowledge content for decision making are required.
