Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Pitfalls in Effective Knowledge Management: Insights from an International Information Technology Organization

Kalle Koivisto, Toni Taipalus

TL;DR

The paper investigates hindering factors that prevent effective knowledge management and sharing in a large international IT organization. It uses an interpretive case-study approach with semi-structured group interviews from 50 participants across 22 teams to identify 44 hindering factors categorized into five themes. The authors propose five actionable recommendations focusing on induction, training, culture, documentation guidelines, and document labeling to mitigate these factors. The findings underscore a persistent gap between the perceived importance of KM and everyday practices, emphasizing social-technical interactions and organizational governance as key levers. The work provides practical insights for knowledge-intensive firms and suggests multi-case studies to generalize context-specific lessons.

Abstract

Knowledge is considered an essential resource for organizations. For organizations to benefit from their possessed knowledge, knowledge needs to be managed effectively. Despite knowledge sharing and management being viewed as important by practitioners, organizations fail to benefit from their knowledge, leading to issues in cooperation and the loss of valuable knowledge with departing employees. This study aims to identify hindering factors that prevent individuals from effectively sharing and managing knowledge and understand how to eliminate these factors. Empirical data were collected through semi-structured group interviews from 50 individuals working in an international large IT organization. This study confirms the existence of a gap between the perceived importance of knowledge management and how little this importance is reflected in practice. Several hindering factors were identified, grouped into personal social topics, organizational social topics, technical topics, environmental topics, and interrelated social and technical topics. The presented recommendations for mitigating these hindering factors are focused on improving employees' actions, such as offering training and guidelines to follow. The findings of this study have implications for organizations in knowledge-intensive fields, as they can use this knowledge to create knowledge sharing and management strategies to improve their overall performance.

Pitfalls in Effective Knowledge Management: Insights from an International Information Technology Organization

TL;DR

The paper investigates hindering factors that prevent effective knowledge management and sharing in a large international IT organization. It uses an interpretive case-study approach with semi-structured group interviews from 50 participants across 22 teams to identify 44 hindering factors categorized into five themes. The authors propose five actionable recommendations focusing on induction, training, culture, documentation guidelines, and document labeling to mitigate these factors. The findings underscore a persistent gap between the perceived importance of KM and everyday practices, emphasizing social-technical interactions and organizational governance as key levers. The work provides practical insights for knowledge-intensive firms and suggests multi-case studies to generalize context-specific lessons.

Abstract

Knowledge is considered an essential resource for organizations. For organizations to benefit from their possessed knowledge, knowledge needs to be managed effectively. Despite knowledge sharing and management being viewed as important by practitioners, organizations fail to benefit from their knowledge, leading to issues in cooperation and the loss of valuable knowledge with departing employees. This study aims to identify hindering factors that prevent individuals from effectively sharing and managing knowledge and understand how to eliminate these factors. Empirical data were collected through semi-structured group interviews from 50 individuals working in an international large IT organization. This study confirms the existence of a gap between the perceived importance of knowledge management and how little this importance is reflected in practice. Several hindering factors were identified, grouped into personal social topics, organizational social topics, technical topics, environmental topics, and interrelated social and technical topics. The presented recommendations for mitigating these hindering factors are focused on improving employees' actions, such as offering training and guidelines to follow. The findings of this study have implications for organizations in knowledge-intensive fields, as they can use this knowledge to create knowledge sharing and management strategies to improve their overall performance.
Paper Structure (22 sections, 8 figures)

This paper contains 22 sections, 8 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background and related work
  3. Knowledge management
  4. Challenges in knowledge management
  5. Knowledge sharing practices
  6. Methodology
  7. Case description
  8. Data collection
  9. Data analysis
  10. Results
  11. Overview
  12. Theme #1: Personal social topics
  13. Theme #2: organizational social topics
  14. Theme #3: technical topics
  15. Theme #4: environmental topics
  16. ...and 7 more sections

Figures (8)

  • Figure 1: A summary of the data collection and analysis steps
  • Figure 2: The five high-level themes of factors hindering effective knowledge management
  • Figure 3: Factors hindering effective knowledge management under the theme personal social topics
  • Figure 4: Factors hindering effective knowledge management under the theme organizational social topics
  • Figure 5: Factors hindering effective knowledge management under the theme technical topics
  • ...and 3 more figures