Klaus North - Knowledge Management

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On the path towards a knowledge-based society, organisations firms, public institutions, non-governmental organisations increasingly face the challenge to mobilise knowledge resources for creating value in a sustainable manner. The transformation towards a digitized economy and society deeply changes how we manage information and knowledge, how we connect, collaborate, learn and decide within and across organizations. While digitalization offers new opportunities for disruptive renewal; knowledge workers, managers and organizations will have to recreate their governance, leadership, innovation, knowledge and learning processes and practices as well as their work organization. New business models and digitally enabled co-creation emerge, requiring new ways of managing knowledge.

This book aims at providing an overview of the fields of knowledge-based management as well as offering guidance for the implementation of knowledge management.

As the fruit of more than twenty years of research and consultancy projects carried out by both authors, this is the first textbook to bring together perspectives and practices on knowledge-based value creation from all continents.

It is intended not only for academic education but also to provide guidance to managers, business consultants, trainers, coaches and those interested in learning about organisations in a knowledge economy. While the main focus of this book is on businesses, many of the approaches, methodologies and tools explained are also applicable in public administration and non-profit organisations.

This book also presents state-of-the-art theory and practice. Many case studies, examples, questions, assignments as well as easy-to-use knowledge management tools at the end of each chapter make this work a compendium for learning and for implementing knowledge management initiatives.

This book begins with an Introductory summary .

Chapter 1 deals with the changed environment of competition in knowledge-based societies and increasingly digitalised economies, and a self-assessment invites the reader to evaluate their own organisation.

Chapter 2 explains what knowledge means in organisations and clarifies the relation between information, knowledge and competitiveness.

Chapter 3 addresses the issue of finding the right organisational form to enable organisational learning, innovation and boundaryless knowledge flows. By using several case studies, different forms of organisations are described from the viewpoint of knowledge structure and knowledge transfer.

Chapter 4 underlines the significance of people for the knowledge of an organisation, and focuses mainly on future working methods in knowledge firms as well as new perceptions of roles of knowledge workers 4.0.

Chapter 5 concentrates on strategies for managing knowledge and offers an explanation of the knowledge market concept.

Chapter 6 is devoted to knowledge management in such different contexts as managing knowledge across cultures, countries and regions as well as in small businesses and the public sector.

Chapter 7 concentrates on how information and communication technologies associated with the digital transformation can support knowledge work.

Chapter 8 addresses the issues of intellectual capital reporting and how to protect and safeguard the knowledge of an organisation.

Chapter 9 provides guidance on implementing knowledge management initiatives in practice and on fulfilling the KM requirements of ISO 9001:2015 in particular.

This book discusses knowledge management predominantly from an organisational and business perspective, but for those readers who are interested on a knowledge worker and leadership perspective based on Peter Druckers thinking, we recommend North and Gueldenberg: Effective Knowledge Work: Answers to the Management Challenge of the 21st Century (Emerald Publishing).

Our thanks go to Deepti Parte and Virendra Degvekar for translating, formatting and editing this book and to Ian Copestake and Christopher Drodge for proofreading. We also thank Silke Bartsch for designing appealing graphs and figures. Lastly, we are also grateful to Springer for their support of the book.