Knowledge and Process Management Volume Number pp 103–118 (2002) DOI: 10.1002 / kpm.136 & Research Article Defining Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies Ronald Maier* and Ulrich Remus University of Regensburg, Germany Along which basic lines could an organization which plans to invest in knowledge management proceed? What general initiatives can be suggested for knowledge management? First, an array of knowledge management goals and strategies is presented taken from theoretical and empirical studies which are then related to each other in the light of what we call a strategic intervention into an organization’s way of handling knowledge We then make the case for the integration of process orientation into a comprehensive multi-dimensional framework for knowledge management strategies Process-oriented knowledge management initiatives are designed to provide employees with task-related knowledge in the organization’s operative business processes We argue that with this framework the resulting processoriented knowledge management strategies address the integration of the resource-based view of an organization — which is the main focus of knowledge management — with the market-oriented view — which is implicitly brought about by process orientation Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd INTRODUCTION Knowledge Management (KM) and Organizational Memory (OM) are concepts well known from organizational science and learning theory Many approaches have been developed which claim to guide organizations to use their common or shared memory in a more efficient way (for extensive surveys of existing KM or OM approaches see Lehner, 2000; Maier and Lehner, 2000) With the advent of advanced database technologies, net and communication technologies, especially the socalled ‘Intranet’ or ‘Web’ technologies, as well as dedicated knowledge management systems (KMS, for a list of systems see Maier, 2002), sound information and communication technologies exist to support organizational processes of creating, acquiring, organizing, distributing and applying knowledge There are already a large number of KM *Correspondence to: Ronald Maier, Department of Business Informatics III, University of Regensburg, D-93040 Regensburg, Germany E-mail: ronald.maier@wiwi.uni-regensburg.de Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd activities implemented in organizations which often lack a strategic perspective KM seems to ‘absorb’ all kinds of theoretical approaches as well as practical activities, measures and technologies without thorough consideration of their strategic or business value We hypothesize that an organization should follow a complex KM strategy as part of a comprehensive business strategy A KM strategy can be described using several dimensions derived from a theoretical and empirical survey of KM activities, measures and technologies Process orientation is a perspective widely accepted in organization science Recently, there have been a number of attempts to integrate KM and process orientation (cf Davenport et al., 1996; Allweyer, 1999; Eppler et al., 1999) However, until now there has been no link between the two concepts on the strategic level Organizations which have already implemented a processoriented organizational design can use processorientation as one of the strategic dimensions The goals of this paper are: $ To lay out a framework that shows the strategic RESEARCH ARTICLE $ options an organization has with respect to KM The framework details the very general classes of KM strategies suggested in the literature (see e.g Hansen et al., 1999) To address the integration of the resource-based view of an organization incorporated into KM initiatives with the market-oriented view In order to accomplish this we make the case for the integration of process orientation into a strategic framework for KM The paper is structured as follows The next section describes the state of the art of KM strategies on the basis of an empirical investigation performed by one of the authors and a literature review on theoretical and empirical studies Then we will motivate process orientation as the starting point for the formulation of a KM strategy The derivation of a process-oriented knowledge management strategy from a general business strategy is outlined The fourth section describes a set of dimensions of KM strategies The fifth section presents the complete framework with all dimensions including the process-oriented dimension and some hints for the application of the framework The final section concludes the paper and gives an outlook on a future research agenda STATE OF THE ART OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES IN PRACTICE This section presents some empirical results concerning KM goals and strategies as well as the relationship to business strategy The results were obtained in an empirical study which was conducted by one of the authors (for a detailed description of the study and its results see Maier, 2002) and in a literature survey on other empirical studies the results of which are presented towards the end of this section The empirical study ‘knowledge management systems ’99’ investigated the state of the art of the use of KMS in the 500 largest German companies and the top 50 banking and insurance companies which resulted in the development of concepts, scenarios and reference models for the management of KMS in organizations From a total of 504 questionnaires sent out, 73 organizations responded (response rate: 14.5) In 22 of the 73 responding organizations (30.1%) KM was well established To check this percentage, we did a telephone survey of 243 organizations originally questioned that showed that this percentage is representative of the sample The questionnaire (in German) together with related 104 Knowledge and Process Management material and publications can be downloaded from the URL: http://www-wi.uni-regensburg de/yoms The list of KM goals which we used in the empirical study was derived from case studies documented in the literature (see e.g Davenport et al., 1998) as well as empirical data found in studies on KM (e.g Earl and Scott, 1999; ILOI, 1997; Bullinger et al., 1997) The questionnaire contained, among others, the question: ‘How much does your organization aim at the following goals?’ In most of the organizations so far KM is an internal activity that is focused (almost) exclusively on the organization-internal knowledge base With the exception of ‘improving innovation’ which can be seen as a very general goal those KM goals that are focused strongly by most if not all organizations primarily try to (1) Improve the handling of existing knowledge in documents or in people’s heads: ‘improve transparency’ (17 organizations strongly aim at this goal), ‘improve access’ (14), ‘improve documentation’ (13) and ‘retention of knowledge’ (14), or to (2) Improve the sharing of knowledge: ‘improve knowledge sharing’ (12), ‘improve communication’ (13) Twelve out of 18 organizations (=66.7%) aimed at eight or more KM goals strongly at the same time Thus, it seems that KM initiatives are currently very broadly and vaguely defined projects Additionally, we asked ‘To what extent does your organization achieve the following goals?’ The rates of achievement of most of the KM goals were ranked on average between 3.71 and 4.63 (on a 7-point scale with being the highest score) showing a medium level of achievement Thus, it seems that the KM efforts of the responding organizations, on average, still have some way to go until the more advanced benefits can be harvested Concerning the relationship of KM initiatives to business goals, the highest benefits are estimated to be in the rather ‘soft’ areas like ‘improve customer satisfaction’, ‘improve speed of innovation’ whereas the quantitative criteria not achieve equally high estimates (e.g ‘reduce costs’, ‘improve growth of organization’) It is interesting to note that two of the three highest-ranked goals (‘improve customer satisfaction’, ‘improve productivity’) are also typical business process reengineering goals Additionally, we asked how many business R Maier and U Remus Knowledge and Process Management processes the organizations targeted with their KM initiatives It is not surprising that only 13 respondents (65% of those responding to this question) answered this question whereas respondents indicated that they did not know how many business processes were targeted In the remaining 53 cases the organizational design of the KM initiative was not (yet) detailed enough to cover this aspect Of the 13 respondents did not focus on business processes, but supported all business processes throughout the organization The other respondents focused on 2, 3, and 10 business processes (1 case per answer) As hypothesized, it seems that process orientation is not yet focused in most of the KM activities of German organizations despite the fact that most organizations had already undergone business process management programs in the past There are also a number of authors who pragmatically suggest a series of KM instruments, activities or efforts as ‘strategies’ They neither detail the link to business strategies nor they distinguish between strategies, on the one hand, and instruments, activities or efforts to implement strategies, on the other Most of these authors base their findings on empirical studies investigating KM initiatives in organizations Examples are (see Ruggles, 1998, p.85f; Hansen et al., 1999, p.278f; APQC, 1996, pp.18ff): (1) Map sources of internal expertise: the issue is to make knowledge assets visible, to increase managers’ attention; the focus is on the personal side of the knowledge in an organization, e.g expert directories, skill databases, yellow pages (2) Establish new knowledge roles: create a separate organizational unit, create positions or roles responsible for knowledge-related tasks, such as knowledge broker or knowledge engineer, assign personal responsibility for knowledge (3) Create a (virtual) work environment which enables the sharing of tacit knowledge: the issue is to create virtual workspaces, networks of knowledge workers which provide an alternative environment to the co-located workspace, thus enabling the sharing of tacit knowledge (4) Support knowledge flows in an organization: knowledge seekers and knowledge providers should be connected using systems and tools which provide for a balancing of pull and push of knowledge KMS are needed which adapt to usage and communication patterns of knowledge seekers and providers (5) Knowledge management as a business strategy: Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies RESEARCH ARTICLE KM is either integrated within the overall business strategy or treated as a separate business strategy in parallel with other strategies (6) Customer-focused knowledge: the aim of this strategy is to capture knowledge about customers, their needs, preferences, businesses and their reactions to actions taken by the organization etc (7) Intellectual asset management strategy: the aim of this strategy is the enterprise-level management of patents, technologies, operational and management practices, customer relations, organizational arrangements, and other knowledge assets (8) Innovation and knowledge creation: research and development is focused to enhance innovation and the creation of new knowledge The state of the art of KM strategies in practice can be described as follows There are already a large number of initiatives in organizations under way They combine very different approaches and singular activities which are supposed to deliver business value by improving the way an organization handles knowledge KM in practice seems to be an effort that comprises all kinds of different activities, measures and technologies Unfortunately, it seems that organizations not pay much attention to the strategic value of their initiatives or the link between KM activities and the business strategy or competitive advantages Thus, it is unclear how a resulting KM strategy can be characterized and detailed PROCESS-ORIENTATION FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES We will first briefly review the advantages of process orientation before we address the resourcebased view and the market-oriented view of an organization, and finally discuss a processoriented KM strategy Advantages of process orientation The process-oriented view offers the following advantages for a KM initiative: $ Value chain orientation: The process-oriented view combines the task-oriented and the knowledgeoriented viewpoint into a value chain-oriented perspective (see explanations above) Knowledge that contributes to value-creating activities can successfully be linked to business 105 RESEARCH ARTICLE $ $ $ $ $ processes Thus, knowledge can be offered to an employee in a much more targeted way At the same time, information overload can be avoided, since only information relevant to the value-creating activity is filtered and made available (see Schreiber et al., 1999, p.72; Bach et al., 1999, p.27) Context relevance: Processes can provide part of the context that is important for the interpretation and construction of process-relevant knowledge That includes knowledge about processes that is to be stored together with knowledge derived from processes during their operation Widely accepted management methods: There are at least ten years of experience in reengineering business processes The adaptation of activities within business process reengineering (BPR) for the specific needs of reengineering knowledgeintensive business processes (cf Davenport et al., 1996) can be a promising area This includes adapted process models, expanded modeling activities (cf Remus and Lehner, 2000), reference models and tools (cf Allweyer, 1999) Expertise in BPR is readily available for organizations Improvement in handling of knowledge: Next to the advantages resulting from an organization’s analysis of its own business processes, such as clarifying tasks and promoting an integrative view, process-orientation can lead to a more targeted improvement in the handling of knowledge in terms of Knowledge Process Redesign (KPR) (see Davenport et al., 1996; Allweyer, 1999; Eppler et al., 1999) Process benchmarking: The comparison of very successful knowledge-intensive business processes can be a good starting point for activities in the field of KPR Since these weakly structured processes are often difficult to describe, efforts in this field seem to be quite reasonable An example is the success of the MIT process handbook which also includes many typical knowledge-intensive business processes (see Malone et al 1999) Support for process-oriented knowledge management: Knowledge processes that handle the flow of information between processes can be implemented and established organizationwide (e.g by creating the position ‘process owner’) Knowledge processes can manage knowledge as service processes for the operative business processes The implementation of process management which also comprises the idea of continuous process improvement (CPI) can integrate the life cycle models of KM 106 Knowledge and Process Management $ $ Process controlling: A problem in KM is transparency about costs and benefits Pragmatic approaches to knowledge controlling could profit from a process-oriented approach Some approaches within the field of active based costing (Scheer 1998, pp.66ff) seem to be appropriate and have to be adapted to knowledgeintensive processes as well Designing and introducing KMS: The analysis of business processes can be a good starting point to design and introduce KMS (see Nissen et al., 2000, p.40; cf CommonKADS methodology for knowledge engineering and management, Schreiber et al., 1999) Information derived from processes can also be used to specify KMS more precisely (e.g process-oriented navigation structure, process-oriented knowledge maps and knowledge structure diagrams) Knowledge management and business strategy The so-called market-based view was most prominently developed and pushed by the frameworks proposed by Porter (e.g the well-known five-forces model, Porter, 1980, p.4; the value chain, Porter, 1985, pp.36ff; the diamond, Porter, 1990, p.71f) These frameworks help to analyze the organization’s environment, namely the attractiveness of industries and competitive positions (for the following see Porter, 1980, pp.3ff, 1985) In its extreme form, the market-based view almost exclusively pays attention to the competitive position and it is mostly only in the implementation phase that the organizational resources are considered The main focus of a strategy in the market-based view is to select an attractive industry and to position an organization attractively within this industry through one of the two generic strategies cost-leadership or differentiation Along with the two possibilities of industrywide activities versus a concentration on a specific niche within the industry, a resulting set of four generic strategies is proposed However, criticism of the one-sided orientation of the market-based view resulted in the development of the resource-based view (see Wernerfelt, 1984; Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991; Leonard-Barton, 1992) The central idea of the resource-based view is that an organization’s success is determined by the existence of organization-specific unique resources As opposed to the market-based view, competitive advantages thus are not due to a superior positioning of an organization in an industry, but to superior quality of resources or a superior use R Maier and U Remus Knowledge and Process Management of the organizational resources The postulated heterogeneity of resources in different organizations enables sustained competitive advantages and is determined by the individual historical developments of the organization Examples are the development of specific material and immaterial resources, the creation of complex organizational routines which in turn causes specific historical trajectories and lead to unique idiosyncratic combinations of resources in organizations (see Barney, 1991, pp.103ff) A framework for a knowledge management strategy can be based on the traditional SWOT analysis in which strategy is seen as balancing the external environment of an organization (its Opportunities and Threats) with its internal capabilities (Strengths, Weaknesses, see Zack, 1999b, p.126) The external environment can be described by Porter’s well-known five forces model (see Porter, 1980) which represents a market-oriented strategy The internal capabilities are studied under the lens of the resource-based view of an organization Knowledge is commonly believed to be one of the most important, if not the most important strategic resource of an organization Consequently, there is broad agreement in the management literature that KM has to be solidly linked to business strategy and ultimately to the creation of economic value and competitive advantage in order to be a sustained effort (see e.g Earl and Scott, 1999, p.36f; Zack, 1999b, p.142) However, this link has not been widely implemented in practice (see Zack, 1999b, p.126 and the empirical studies cited there) This is due to the lack of strategic models to link KM efforts (in the sense of knowledge-oriented processes, organizational structures and instruments, culture-related activities and the implementation of technologies) and business strategy KM activities are performed with the help of knowledge processes like knowledge identification, knowledge organization and knowledge distribution (see Probst and Raub, 1998, p.51) Besides the advantages of the resource-based view for a business strategy and also for a KM strategy there is the danger that an organization focuses (almost) exclusively on its internal resources The respective shortcomings are well described under the concept of core rigidity (see Raub and Romhardt, 1998, cit Barton, 1992) Core rigidity means that an organization does not consider market-oriented factors, like new business fields, customer groups, new competitors and therefore might loose competitiveness On the other hand, it is also not advisable that organizations exclusively consider market-oriented Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies RESEARCH ARTICLE factors in their strategy A typical example would be a diversification into industries with which the organization is not familiar From a resource-based view an exclusive market-oriented strategy can result in a fragmentation and erosion of the organizational knowledge base This is due to the danger that competencies needed for the new strategic business unit cannot be integrated with the existing organizational knowledge base because often there is a lack of competencies (or simply time!) to evolve, manage and integrate these separate knowledge bases Figure gives a more detailed picture of the relationships between knowledge management and a simplified version of the strategic management process (Schendel and Hofer, 1979, 15) The first step of this process is the identification of the key resources related to knowledge management At the same time the competitive environment has to be analyzed in order to provide a focus for the identification of the resources Resources are only meaningful and valuable, because they allow organizations to perform activities that create advantages in particular markets (see Porter, 1991, p.108) Knowledge management supports the identification, development and acquisition of knowledge-related resources Zack’s concept of knowledge gap can be found on this level The next step is the selection of strategically relevant resources in order to provide organizational competencies or capabilities Resources are only indirectly linked with the capabilities that the firm can generate A competency or capability consists of an integrated, linked and networked set of resources, a ‘team of resources’ (Grant, 1991, p.120) Knowledge management aims at leveraging resources, e.g by concentrating them upon a few clearly defined goals, accumulating resources through mining experience and accessing other firms’ resources, complementing resources, conserving them to use resources for different products and markets and recovering resources by increasing the speed of the product development cycle time (see Grant, 1998, p.126) Figure also shows a circle model visualizing the four dimensions of capabilities: skills and the organizational knowledge base, technical systems, managerial systems and the values and norms associated with organizational knowledge (see Leonard-Barton, 1992, p.113f) Capabilities can be compared to the competition Capabilities and competencies are considered as core if they differentiate a company strategically The resulting capability differentials give rise to competitive advantages which can be realized by applying the competencies in selected strategic business fields 107 RESEARCH ARTICLE Figure Knowledge and Process Management Relationship between knowledge management and competitive advantage Knowledge management supports the integration of resources into capabilities, the valuation of capability differentials and drives the dynamics of the organizational learning cycle as sustained capability differentials require continuos improvement of the competencies Instead of following these extreme positions, we suggest to balance market- and resourceorientation Therefore, an organization should organize its internal resources according to a resource-based strategy by managing knowledgebased resources with the help of KM activities Simultaneously, it should choose competitive business fields, customer groups, products and services according to a market-based strategy The definition of corporate goals and corporate analysis identifies, on the one hand, strategic business units (SBU) and, on the other hand, fields of core competencies These tasks are at first independent of the organizational design which represents the next step of the strategic management process Besides designing the organizational structure it is necessary to design the corresponding tasks and workflows This can be done by defining business processes Business processes can be organized in terms of 108 strategic business units or fields of core competencies That means that processes can be designed guided by market- as well as resource-oriented considerations The market-oriented corporate strategy is strongly oriented towards customers and markets which is all the more emphasized by the concept of process-orientation The latter means the design of customer-related business processes In this case the design of business processes is guided by delivering value to the customer who triggers and receives the output of the value chain (=‘end-toend view’, see Davenport et al., 1996) and does not focus on organizational core competencies With respect to the resource-based corporate strategy which is at first oriented towards internal factors process orientation can provide a useful means to avoid the danger of ‘core rigidity’ This is due to the fact that the implementation of business processes inherently considers market-oriented factors because of its ‘end-to-end view’ from customer to customer The following generic types of core competencies can be used to design core and service processes in the resource-based strategy (see Scholz and Vrohlings, 1994, p.102) R Maier and U Remus Knowledge and Process Management $ $ $ Competence of creation: analysis of markets, definition of products and services Competence of realization: realization of services, procurement, production, offer add-on services Competence of transaction: develop markets, logistics, order fulfillment, maintenance These core competencies are directly noticed by customers and are organized by customer-oriented core processes, in other words the business processes serve to transform core competencies into process outputs, i.e products and services for the customers If we compare both approaches to design business processes it might well be that the two resulting sets of business processes are equal independent of the orientation of the strategy that guided the design process A typical example is the order fulfillment process which can be derived directly when customer needs are considered or the generic competence of transaction as described above is bundled in the order fulfillment process Clearly, resourceorientation and market-orientation are related as business processes require core competencies to deliver marketable products and services Process-oriented knowledge management strategy So far we have discussed KM strategies and corporate strategies in an isolated way We then proposed to integrate resource-based and marketoriented factors when designing and implementing business processes In this section we will show in detail how to integrate the resourcebased and the market-oriented view into what we call a process-oriented knowledge management strategy Figure presents a framework that integrates market-orientation and resource-orientation with the help of a process-oriented KM strategy Market-oriented factors are considered in the definition of strategic business units Simultaneously organizational core competencies are defined A process-oriented KM strategy should be able to balance both orientations, by considering the organization’s core competencies when defining strategic business units Additionally, a processoriented KM strategy has to select strategic business units which are needed for the development of (complementary) core competencies These tasks are guided by strategic knowledge assets which are developed and managed by KM activities A strategic knowledge asset is a concept that views core competencies in the light of their application Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies RESEARCH ARTICLE for products and services, in Porter’s terms systems of activities (Porter, 1996) that make a difference visible for the customers (external perspective) On the other hand, strategic knowledge assets help to orient the development and management of core competencies (internal perspective) Strategic knowledge assets guide the design of business processes As discussed above, the design of business processes can be guided by SBUs or by core competencies Strategic knowledge assets bridge the gap between SBU’s and core competencies In the following we will discuss two scenarios from which organizations can start to formulate a process-oriented KM strategy The two scenarios represent the two extreme positions of an exclusive market oriented or resource-oriented strategy as the starting point for the implementation of a process-oriented KM strategy Scenario 1: If an organization so far has applied an exclusive market-oriented strategy, then external determinants such as customers’ demands, the organization’s market position and competitors’ process designs are explicitly considered in the process design One of the most important factors towards customer orientation is the consideration of individual requirements and is implemented, for example, by the management of variants and complexity and in the idea of triage to organize three variants of a process that differ in the amount of complexity encountered in different markets, situations or inputs (Hammer and Champy, 1993, p.55f) In this scenario, a process-oriented KM strategy will guide the process design on the organizational level and consider the organization’s resources in the bundling of core competencies in separate knowledge-intensive business processes and/or knowledge processes in the sense of service processes for the organization’s business processes These newly designed processes are managed, for ă example, by centers of competence (see Topfer, 1997) or specific KM roles, such as knowledge brokers, subject matter specialists, best-practice groups or communities-of-interest Scenario 2: If an organization has exclusively applied a resource-based strategy, then business processes are derived from core competencies Thus, knowledge processes that manage core competencies supposedly are already defined To avoid core rigidity we have to additionally consider market-oriented factors In this scenario, a process-oriented knowledge management strategy and the definition of strategic knowledge assets have to consider these external factors in the definition of knowledgeintensive business processes An example is the 109 RESEARCH ARTICLE Figure Process-oriented KM integrates the resource-based view and the market-oriented view of an organization bundling of competencies in business processes that make a visible difference to the organization’s customers This can be institutionalized in socalled centers of excellence visible to the customers or in specific KM roles, such as boundary spanners and cross-organizational expert networks and communities-of-interest To sum up, the role of a process-oriented knowledge management strategy is to guide the 110 Knowledge and Process Management design of business and knowledge processes that avoid the problems of core rigidity in the case of resource-orientation and strategic ‘over-stretching’ of competencies in the case of market-orientation The strategic knowledge asset was introduced as the concept connecting strategic business units and core competencies and thus relates the external and internal perspective resulting in core competencies visible to the customers R Maier and U Remus Knowledge and Process Management A process-oriented knowledge management strategy The relevance of an integrated view on process orientation and KM is underlined by strong dependencies between these two approaches on the operational level Knowledge is created within the operative business processes and shared with other business processes On the other hand, knowledge also plays a crucial role when an organization decides to implement the concept of process management The development and distribution of process knowledge (see below) in improvement or change processes is a key factor for successful continuous process improvement which contributes to the adaptation of an organization to environmental change In a study conducted by the Fraunhofer institute in Berlin the German Top 1000 and European Top 200 companies were questioned about what KM activities they applied in connection with business processes (see Mertins et al., 2001, pp.97–123) One interesting result is the close relationship between core competencies and the starting point of KM initiatives with respect to the number of business processes Organizations were asked how many business processes contributed to their core competencies More than two thirds of the companies said that between two and five business processes contributed to their core competencies Similarly, more than half of the companies started their KM initiative in two or three business processes, 20% even focused on one single business process If we assume that the duration of KM projects increases with the number of business processes involved we can hypothesize that companies try to gain ‘quick wins’ in knowledge management and therefore avoid large and complex KM projects Not surprisingly, the companies targeted their KM initiatives initially on those business processes which in their view also contributed to their core competencies (see Mertins et al., 2001, p.101) These results once again show the close relationship between core competencies, core business processes and KM activities in practice Certainly, the application of process orientation in general and a process-oriented KM strategy in particular has limits The traditional perspective which considers business processes is the model of value chains by Porter (1985) The organization is analyzed in terms of value creating activities, which basically rely on the underlying business processes However, expanded value configuration models like the value shop and the value network are suitable instruments to analyze and describe new alternative value creation technologies, Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies RESEARCH ARTICLE especially for knowledge-intensive business processes (cf Stabell and Fjeldstad, 1998, p.415) A central point of all these approaches is the orientation towards value creation Generally, a knowledge management strategy which uses process orientation as the primary perspective to analyze an organization is strongly dependent on the following requirements and conditions: $ $ The core business of the organization which is about to design a knowledge management strategy is viewed and managed using a processoriented perspective Business processes are modeled and described and therefore visible for the employees Process-oriented management activities have already been carried out (e.g business process reengineering, business process improvement, process management) Process-orientation in general and these activities in particular are well known and accepted by the employees Some weak spots in handling knowledge have been identified There are some measures and indicators of the process which are collected regularly (e.g time, cost, quality) Process orientation can and should be seen as an additional dimension within a bundle of possible dimensions describing a complex KM strategy, especially for process-oriented organizations The framework presented in the next section is intended to provide the integrating basis for the description of a process-oriented KM strategy DIMENSIONS OF PROCESS-ORIENTED KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES In the following a number of strategic options to the implementation of KM activities are discussed These options make up a framework comprising six dimensions which can be used to classify KM strategies Topics/content KM strategies can be distinguished according to the knowledge content, the type of knowledge that is focused In order to position an organization against its competitors, the following three categories of knowledge can be distinguished per area of competency, or per strategic business unit, division, product line, function or market position (see Zack, 1999b, p.133f): $ Core knowledge: the minimum knowledge commonly held by members of an industry; also 111 RESEARCH ARTICLE $ $ considered the basic industry knowledge barrier to entry Advanced knowledge: enables an organization to be competitively viable; competitors may generally hold about the same level, scope or quality of knowledge, but knowledge differentiation can take place with competitors holding specific knowledge Innovative knowledge: enables an organization to lead its industry and to significantly differentiate itself from its competitors Along these lines a large number of ‘dimensions’ can be distinguished which describe various types of knowledge These dimensions are outlined by pairs (e.g tacit versus explicit or narrative versus abstract knowledge, see Table below) which can be used to describe knowledge processes or process steps These knowledge processes are transformations of knowledge of one type into knowledge of the opposite type of one and the same pair In our framework a number of knowledge dimensions are distinguished with respect to the corresponding main ‘‘area of intervention’’ – organization, systems, content etc (see e.g Romhardt, 1997, pp.10ff, Eppler et al., 1999; Zack, 1999, pp.46) Target group KM strategies can also be classified according to the main target group focused: $ $ $ $ Employee rank: the strategies differ in which level of employees is considered as the primary focus of KM activities: employee – manager – executive Employee life cycle: one could imagine special knowledge-related activities, e.g starter packages for KMS, communities specially designed for newly recruited employees, time reserved for employees facing retirement to document lessons learned or to act as a mentor, or for employees preparing for or immediately after completing a step in their career Employee role: the strategies differ in what roles of employees are focused, e.g role-specific packages for KMS, communities linking employees who are on about the same career track, like high potentials, functional specialists, internationals etc Organizational scope: at least four scopes can be distinguished (the corresponding technologies are given in parentheses): core group (work space) — organization (intranet) — organization and partners (extranet, virtual private network) — unlimited (Internet-communities) 112 Knowledge and Process Management Instruments and technology Instruments for knowledge management influence all levels of intervention, i.e the underlying corporate culture, the organizational structure, roles, processes and the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) There are lots of different types of instruments involved in KMinitiatives, as, for example, yellow pages and skills directories, expert networks, communities, lessons learned, best practices, content management (see Maier, 2002) As opposed to the content-oriented approach described above, several authors propose a classification of technologies supporting KM Table contains a list of KMS classes For each of the classes there are a number of application systems or tools respectively which are already available on the market (the list was established by a theoretical and empirical assessment of currently available KMS done by one of the authors, see Maier, 2002, see also Ruggles, 1998, pp.82ff): $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ Knowledge repositories (knowledge element management systems; knowledge management suites): Hyperwave Information Server and Portal, OpenText Livelink, SAP Knowledge Warehouse; Knowledge discovery and mapping: e.g IBM Intelligent Miner USU Knowledge Miner Dataprise DataBroker; Knowledge transfer and e-learning: e.g Hyperwave E-Learning Suite, Lotus Learning Space; Meta-search systems: InQuery (Open Text), K2 Enterprise (Verity); Collaboration: e.g., Lotus Notes; Visualization and navigation systems: e.g Brain, InXight Correlate K-Map; Community builder: Community Engine (webfair); Push-oriented systems: Push Application Server (Backweb) These KMS are operated on the basis of an (organization-wide) information and communication infrastructure, in most cases an Intranetplatform, on which information sharing between (virtual) teams both within the organization and across organizational boundaries with allies, suppliers and customers is possible The KM instruments and systems described above can be classified as follows (see Zack, 1999a, p.50): $ Integrative knowledge management instruments and systems focus knowledge as an object as the primary medium for knowledge exchange and comprise the following KMS: R Maier and U Remus Knowledge and Process Management RESEARCH ARTICLE Table Dimensions of process-oriented KM strategies Strategic dimension/ sub-dimension Topics/content (1) Competiveness (2) With respect to the content of knowledge (3) With respect to a holder of knowledge or valuing (4) With respect to the organizational design (5) With respect to systems (6) With respect to the knowledge life cycle (7) With respect to business processes Participants and communities (1) Employee rank (2) Employee life cycle (3) Employee role (4) Organizational scope Instruments and technology (1) Integrative instruments (2) Interactive instruments (1) Integrative systems (2) Interactive systems Culture (1) Social mechanism for exchanging knowledge (2) Degree of sensitivity of interest KM organization and processes (1) KM structural organization (2) KM role Value (examples) $Core knowledge vs advanced $Narrative/concrete vs scientific/abstract knowledge valuable for storing vs knowledge not valuable for storing $Implicit/tacit vs explicit knowledge $Personalized vs codified knowledge $Relevant/authorized/formal/ dominant vs irrelevant/ not authorized/informal/ minority knowledge $Secret/confidential vs public/ open knowledge $True/supported vs false/ unsupported knowledge $Knowledge knowledge vs innovative knowledge $Universal vs particular knowledge $Communicable vs non-communicable knowledge $Organization internal vs organization external knowledge $Knowledge spanning functional areas vs knowledge restricted to a functional area $Focused vs scattered knowledge $Individual/personal vs collective/ public knowledge $Knowledge vs counter-knowledge $Accessible vs not accessible $Electronic/computer-resident vs not knowledge electronic/not computer-resident knowledge $Codable vs non-codable knowledge $Preserved vs newly acquired $Knowledge vs not knowledge knowledge $Existing vs new knowledge $Knowledge about the process vs knowledge within the process vs knowledge derived from the process $Employee vs manager vs executive $Newly recruited employees vs employees facing retirement vs Employees on specific step of careers $Technical expert vs e.g insurance: $Single role vs multiple roles underwriter, secretary $Core group vs organization vs organization and partners vs unlimited $Lessons learned $Best practices $Yellow pages $Skills directories $Knowledge repositories $Knowledge discovery and $Content management $Expert networks $Communities $Meta-search systems $Visualization and navigation systems mapping $Collaboration, knowledge transfer and e-learning $Push-oriented systems $Community builder $Law and order model vs $Family culture model vs $High vs low $Market model vs $Discourse model $Informal initiative $Project $Chief Knowledge Officer/ $Separate knowledge manager $Knowledge broker $Subject matter specialist Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies organizational unit $Boundary spanner $Community manager 113 RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management Table Continued Strategic dimension/ sub-dimension Value (examples) (3) KM activities $Knowledge $Knowledge $Knowledge $Knowledge (4) Knowledge processes $Content management process $Community management process $Single process vs multiple processes $Process complexity (5) Business process focus (6) Business process type creation vs acquisition vs organization vs formalization vs – Instruments: lessons learned, best practices, content management; – Systems: knowledge repositories, knowledge discovery and mapping, meta-search systems, visualization and navigation systems; $ Interactive knowledge management instruments and systems primarily support interaction among people to facilitate the exchange of tacit knowledge: – Instruments: yellow pages and skills directories, expert networks, communities; – Systems: knowledge transfer and e-learning, collaboration $ Cultural environment Certain aspects of organizational culture can promote or hinder the handling of knowledge in an organization A KM strategy, on the one hand, has to consider the cultural environment in an organization and, on the other hand, the implementation of a KM strategy will have effects on the cultural environment (see e.g von Krogh, 1998) A KM strategy promotes a particular cultural environment which is thought to be conducive for the intended KM activities This can be, for example, a particular ‘social mechanism for exchanging knowledge’ (see Geißler, 1999, p.56f): $ $ ‘Law-and-order model’: power, rights and privileges determine the practice of sharing knowledge The power system in an organization standardizes the distribution, sharing and handing-on of knowledge ‘Family culture model’: the sharing of knowledge is determined by interpersonal sympathy and antipathy as well as traditional, unwritten moral obligations There are all kinds of group relations that lead to informal standardization 114 $Knowledge distribution vs $Knowledge application vs $Knowledge evolution vs $Knowledge worker/participant $Knowledge controlling $Project debriefing process vs all processes $Core, service and management processes of knowledge and the way of knowledge sharing specific to groups This eases sharing within groups and hinders sharing between groups ‘Market model’: knowledge is considered a resource the value of which is determined based on supply and demand It is not the flows of knowledge that are designed with respect to their contents, but the framework in which the market transactions (here: the exchange of knowledge) take place has to be guaranteed ‘Discourse model’: the goal is to achieve ‘objective’ truth, material, normative findings as well as to achieve consensus about the valuing of these findings Knowledge development is based solely on the power of convincing arguments Another factor is the ‘degree of sensitivity of interest’ (see Frese and Theuvsen, 2000, pp.32ff) This factor is partly influenced by the organizational culture, especially the relationship between the executives and representatives of the employees or unions respectively and the openness of the employees towards organizational change and partly influenced by laws and regulations (e.g the German Mitbestimmungsrecht) The two ends of this factor are (see Frese and Theuvsen, 2000, p.33): $ $ High degree of sensitivity of interest: making a proactive management of potential conflicts in the course of change necessary Low degree of sensitivity of interest: which means that there is no need for conflict management KM strategies have to take into account the sensitivity as it will strongly affect the success of KM measures An example is the willingness to share knowledge, which can be negatively influenced by a high degree of sensitivity of interest R Maier and U Remus Knowledge and Process Management RESEARCH ARTICLE Structural organization and processes single business process may have some advantages concerning the acceptance for further KM activities for other business processes ‘Quick wins’ that show significant improvements of the handling of knowledge in one business process are important success factors for the implementation of organization-wide KM efforts (cf Bach et al., 1999, p.30) Type of knowledge process: KM strategies can address different types of knowledge processes (cf Maula, 2000) The term process is used in a variety of ways in the context of KM Knowledge processes support the flow of knowledge between business processes and between business units as well as the (businessprocess-independent) creation and collection of knowledge This can be knowledge processes supporting the collection, processing and storing of information as an outcome of conventional business processes An example for a typical knowledge process would be the publication of a knowledge element in the corporate intranet There are a number of authors who suggest a series of activities or a life cycle associated with KM (see e.g Nissen et al., 2000, pp.29ff; Probst et al., 1998, pp.47ff; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Zack, 1999b) KM life cycle models basically divide KM into six phases (see Table 1, see also e.g Nissen et al., 2000, p.30; Probst et al., 1998) Thus, a KM strategy can be characterized by the type of knowledge activities or processes it (primarily) focuses Type of business process: The question which types of processes are promising candidates for process-oriented KM initiatives is strongly related to the identification of knowledgeintensive business processes Eppler et al suggest some characteristics describing knowledge intensity of business processes (see Eppler et al., 1999 and Davenport et al., 1996, p.55) Within the group of knowledge-intensive business processes we can distinguish between simple and highly complex processes and between management, core and service processes Structurally, a KM initiative can be organized as a separate organizational unit (competence center knowledge management, center for business knowledge), as a project or as an informal initiative (e.g a community of employees interested in KM) In our empirical study, the following KM roles have been identified (see Maier, 2002): $ $ $ $ $ $ Chief Knowledge Officer/knowledge manager: highest ranked role in knowledge management, denotes the head of KM in analogy to the Chief Information Officer, the head of IT Knowledge broker: helps participants to locate the knowledge or experts needed, helps to navigate the organizational knowledge base Subject matter specialist: has particular expertise in one particular area and serves as gatekeeper of information and knowledge quality assurer, expert in one or more topics and linking pin to agencies and research institutions Boundary spanner: has to network fields of competencies and broker contacts between experts in different fields needed to realize new business ideas Community manager: responsible for the functioning of the community, has the ‘last word’ in the set up of policies and norms, e.g about participation in the community, its organization, about themes and topics, the discussion style etc Knowledge worker/participant: all persons that are affected by KM initiatives We differentiate participants from users with respect to the application of KMS because of their active involvement in the KMS’s functioning KM strategies can also be described according to the process focus and the type of business and knowledge processes supported: $ Process focus (project focus and starting point): KM projects can be distinguished according to the process scope that is focused The focus on processes can stretch from a single process over a number of processes to an organization-wide perspective, including all relevant business processes (core and service) Defining a project starting from operative business processes instead of knowledge processes is much more targeted towards the value-creating activities of an organization because the isolated definition of knowledge processes is often not practicable (cf Bach et al., 1999) The process focus is dependent on the starting point of a KM project Starting with a Process-oriented Knowledge Management Strategies $ $ DISCUSSION OF THE DIMENSIONS Table gives an overview of the framework showing all dimensions presented in the previous section together with their sub-dimensions and examples for possible values along the subdimensions The framework can be used as a checklist to detail KM initiatives The dimensions 115 RESEARCH ARTICLE which we included in our framework describe different levels of analysis We can distinguish between dimensions (e.g KM organization and processes), sub-dimensions (e.g KM role, knowledge process) and values (e.g ‘knowledge broker’, ‘boundary spanner’, ‘subject matter specialist’) The dimensions are strongly interdependent (e.g KMS support different types of knowledge, collaboration tools focus more on the exchange of implicit knowledge, whereas knowledge repositories organize codified knowledge How does our work relate to the popular differentiation between personalization and codification strategies made by Hansen et al (1999)? Our framework can be used to detail these two strategies using a vertical cut in the sense of a combination of values for all sub-dimensions of our framework Some examples are: The personalization strategy can be detailed by, for example, the values ‘implicit knowledge’ and ‘not computer-resident knowledge’ of our dimension type of knowledge whereas the codification strategy is focused on the values ‘explicit’ and ‘computer-resident’ knowledge In the dimension instruments and technology the codification strategy can be detailed by the subdimension integrative KMS and the personalization strategy by the sub-dimension interactive KMS We can also assign the values in the sub-dimension social mechanism for exchanging knowledge (dimension cultural environment) to the two strategies For example the ‘law and order model’ and the ‘market model’ correspond to the codification strategy, whereas the ‘family culture model’ and ‘discourse model’ are strongly related to the personalization strategy In the case of process orientation and type of knowledge process the differentiation in personalization and codification strategy influences the design of, for example, the knowledge processes (e.g ‘knowledge distribution’ can be done person-to-person — personalization strategy — or via knowledge repositories — codification strategy) CONCLUSION In this paper we have given an overview of existing approaches to develop KM strategies as found in the literature We also reported the results of an empirical study which showed that currently KM activities in organizations are linked neither to a well-defined KM strategy nor directly to a business strategy We then analyzed KM initiatives, activities and efforts with regard to 116 Knowledge and Process Management dimensions that are crucial for the definition of a complex KM strategy To integrate the different dimensions (procedures, starting points and perspectives) of these approaches we proposed a framework where the most important dimensions were put together We then made the case for an additional dimension: process orientation The main advantage of a so-called ‘process-oriented KM strategy’ is that it provides an integration of the resourcebased view and the market-oriented view of the organization The balancing of the two views is guided by the concept of strategic knowledge assets which are developed and managed by KM activities Strategic knowledge assets view core competencies in the light of their application for products and services that make a difference visible for the customers (external perspective) and help to orient the development and management of core competencies (internal perspective) Strategic knowledge assets in turn guide the design of business processes Along which basic lines could an organization which plans to invest in KM proceed? What general initiatives can be suggested for KM? These were the questions we posed at the beginning of our paper The framework can be seen as an initial step in answering them The next steps will be to use this framework to empirically assess different KM strategies which have proven to be successful Thus, future research should address the following issues: $ $ On the basis of this framework combinations of values on the dimensions that ‘fit’ together, i.e KM strategies that have proven to be successful, will have to be identified theoretically and empirically A procedure describing the application of the framework has to be developed and empirically tested There are many unresolved research questions in the area of KM concerning not only KM strategies but also the organizational design of KM, usefulness of the content of KMS, architectures and classification of KMS, differences in design and management between KMS and more traditional information and communication systems and, last but not least, the economics of the application of KMS Our framework is seen as an instrument to support both theoretical and empirical investigations into systematic interventions in an organization’s way of handling knowledge R Maier and U Remus Knowledge and Process Management REFERENCES Allweyer T 1999 A framework for redesigning and ă managing knowledge processes, Saarbrucken http:// www.processworld.com/ content/docs/8.doc/ (last access: 7/26/2001) APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center International Benchmarking Clearinghouse) (ed.) 1996 Knowledge Management — Consortium Benchmarking Study Best Practice Report Houston, TX ă Bach V, Vogler P, Osterle H 1999 Business-KnowledgeManagement: Praxiserfahrungen mit intranet-basierten ¨ Losungen Berlin Barney JB 1991 Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage Journal of Management 17: No 1, 99120 ă Bullinger H-J, Worner K, Prieto J 1997 Wissensmanagement heute Daten, Fakten, Trends Fraunhofer Institut Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation, Stuttgart Davenport TH, DeLong DW, Beers MC 1998 Successful knowledge management projects Sloan Management Review 39: No 2, Winter, 43–57 Davenport TH, Jarvenpaa SL, Beers MC 1996 Improving knowledge work processes Sloan Management Review 37: No 4, Summer, 53–65 Davenport T, Prusak L 1998 Working Knowledge Harvard Business School Press: Boston MA Earl MJ, Scott IA 1999 Opinion: What Is a Chief Knowledge Ofcer? 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