Strategische Wissensmanagementkompetenz von Unternehmen (English shop)

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Continuous changes in the economy and society and in the field of technology confront companies with the challenge of deploying the knowledge available to them, through competent actions, in the best possible way for corporate success, and thus of securing the competitive position and hence the survival of the company in the long term. Achieving this requires a strategic knowledge management competence, which describes the ability of a company to generate knowledge-based competitive advantages in a self-organised manner. This is achieved through the effective, purposeful development and utilisation of the organisational knowledge base. The development of the knowledge base takes place by means of organisational learning processes at the individual, collective, organisational and interorganisational levels.

To describe strategic knowledge management competence, a model is presented which, as an ordering concept or explanatory model, makes it possible to identify the various influencing factors and interrelationships of strategic knowledge management competence. Fundamental to the emergence of this competence is organisational learning capability, which, building on the organisational knowledge base, continuously modifies it with regard to new requirements. In this context, knowledge as a static object becomes the starting point of organisational learning, which in turn is itself to be regarded as a dynamic development process of a company’s knowledge base.

With the aim of sustainably improving the handling of the unique resource of knowledge within the company, a purposeful knowledge management is required in the company, which can in principle be oriented either towards technology or towards people. On the basis of these orientations in knowledge management, four types of company were distinguished with regard to competence in strategic knowledge management. It should be emphasised that the intuitive type classifies companies which shape knowledge management unconsciously and without concrete objectives in relation to either orientation. From the two extremes of technology orientation and human orientation, the technology-oriented company type and the human-oriented company type are derived. The technology-oriented type places material knowledge carriers and the explicit knowledge bound to them at the centre, while the human-oriented type focuses on personal knowledge carriers and the implicit knowledge bound to them. Since the combination of both approaches is to be termed integrative knowledge management, the integrative company type is the fourth type to be differentiated. On the basis of these four company types, ideal-typical development paths can be identified along which companies can reach three levels of strategic knowledge management competence at the level of the overall organisation.

In principle it is difficult to determine the immediate value of knowledge for a company, and it is therefore also almost impossible to assess competent actions with regard to the handling of knowledge for the formation of knowledge-based competitive advantages. Within the framework of this work, empirical data were collected which permit statements about fundamental interrelationships of strategic knowledge management competence and also enable an assessment of the participating companies with regard to their strategic knowledge management competence. Among the results to be emphasised is that there is a fundamental statistical relationship between the importance of explicit knowledge and technology orientation in knowledge management. Likewise, a statistical relationship between the importance of implicit knowledge and human orientation in knowledge management could be demonstrated. With regard to the delimitation and assessment of the company types, it was possible, on the one hand, to characterise in each case a group of companies that shape knowledge management in a rather intuitive, technology-oriented or human-oriented way. In addition, a differentiated analysis of the group with integrative knowledge management made it possible to identify tendencies with regard to the development paths. Furthermore, the analysis of the data set has shown that along the theoretically derived development paths the respective companies can also be attributed a higher level of strategic knowledge management competence.