Knowledge management within an organisation: A consulting engineering company as a case study

Abstract

Knowledge is power. Knowledge management (KM) provides comprehensive means to channel this potential power to the benefit of an organisation. When flourishing in an enterprise, KM offers substantial benefits which includes time and monetary savings for the business, as well as growth in skills, productivity and job satisfaction for employees. Before knowledge could be managed, clear distinction must be made between knowledge and its relatives data and information. This differentiation would enable the KM effort to focus on knowledge only, allowing the KM initiative to be lean. Organisational knowledge must further be dissected to explicit and tacit form, as they both play distinctive roles in KM. The KM solutions framework provides a means to manage knowledge. This framework offers an all-encompassing and structured means to manage an organisation’s most critical asset, namely its knowledge. The framework provides sound principles, where emphasis is placed on organisational culture and communities of practice. It should be noted that the framework should not be applied blindly, as the application of formalised KM should be tailored uniquely for each organisation. Over application would clutter the organisation, diluting focus, while under application would not grant KM the extensive corporate attention and support it rightly justifies. Regardless of the extent of KM application, KM should always have an 80% people focus with technology making up the remaining 20%, playing a supporting role. To establish what KM would look like in practice, Aurecon was used as a case study. During the empirical investigation of the study, it was found that various KM foundational elements such as technologies, mechanisms and communities of practice were present in the consulting organisation. The study further revealed that organisational culture enabled people to successfully create and share knowledge in a localised setting. It was however established that KM amongst Aurecon’s people seldomly occurred outside their immediate location. It was thus concluded that Aurecon’s KM foundation is sufficiently equipped to realise the ultimate goal of KM, but its organisational culture is not fully aligned with the initiative yet. Remedial measures are proposed to improve the status quo and include the fostering of an enabling culture where knowledge creation and sharing occurs beyond the boundaries of an employees’ personal network. This culture must be visibly driven by leadership, where people’s participation in company-wide KM are motivated by incentives and are held accountable by key performance indicators. Through communities of practice, knowledge seekers could be connected to knowledge sharers, and in doing so, granting seekers access to the knowledge of the entire organisation.