More and more organizations are now trying to attain competitive superiority through better management and use of their knowledge assets. While some initial success stories on knowledge management initiatives have been reported, no coherent framework on knowledge management has yet been proposed. Using the grounded theory approach, we carried out a field study on the knowledge management initiative of a multi-national financial institution and, based on an initial analysis of our data, propose a preliminary framework that incorporates several critical success factors for knowledge management. Introduction In a dynamic and competitive business environment characterized by unpredictable changes, organizations need to be able to continually adapt or adjust their structures, processes, domains, and goals to remain viable (Huber, 1991). This quest for competitive superiority also implies that organizations need to become increasingly effective in using their existing knowledge base for strategic benefit, and in creating and acquiring new knowledge to broaden their knowledge base (Sanchez and Heene, 1997). In a volatile environment, this creation and acquisition of new knowledge must outpace the rate at which current organizational knowledge is becoming obsolete. As we move from an information era into a knowledge era, competitive superiority is increasingly being derived from intellectual assets. To obtain greater value from their intellectual assets, organizations need to manage knowledge generation, transfer, and use among their various functional or business units. Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management Organizational learning literature provides us with a basis for studying knowledge management. Duncan and Weiss (1991) argue that organizational knowledge is critical for the effective operation and adaptation of organizations and it is through learning that organizations develop this knowledge. The current body of organization learning studies focuses specifically on the processes through which organizational knowledge grows and changes. However, little research has been done on how organizational units possessing knowledge and organizational units needing knowledge can seek each other out quickly and with a high likelihood (Huber, 1991). Toward this direction, we need to investigate how organizational memory can serve as a repository of organizational knowledge so as to facilitate the internal search for knowledge by organizational units. Knowledge management has emerged as a key theme among recent research efforts aimed at understanding how to better use organizational memory. At present, such research efforts are still in an infancy stage where the literature comprises mainly articles in magazines, articles on websites, or internal articles produced by consultancy firms. These articles provide some insights, based on anecdotal evidence, that suggest how we may be able to obtain more value from organizational knowledge bases. There have also been several descriptive case studies that describe knowledge management initiatives at prominent organizations, such as British Petroleum, Dow Chemical, Hewlett Packard, Skandia Assurance, and Texas Instruments. These success stories have prompted scholars to recognize the need for knowledge management in organizations. As a result, scholars began to identify key challenges and issues involved in knowledge management and to seek out critical success factors for effective knowledge management. For example, a critical challenge confronting most knowledge management is how to transform the deep-rooted organizational culture and individual belief of “knowledge is power” into “knowledge sharing is power”. To overcome such challenges, all knowledge management initiatives need to be undertaken with a long-term perspective, with the support from top management and the cooperation of organizational units. Two interesting observations are apparent from the few success stories on knowledge management. First, successful knowledge management initiatives typically begin with the recognition of a need to accelerate knowledge transfer and access. In the case of British Petroleum, the use of virtual teamwork through video-conferences to solve critical operational problems had led to faster knowledge transfer, which results in significant time and cost savings. Secondly, to facilitate knowledge management, organizations have begun to create new roles such as Chief Knowledge Officer or Director of Intellectual Capital (see Table 1).