Knowledge Management and Business Model Innovation

The field of Knowledge Management is a rapidly growing one, and there is a need for books that avoid easy populism. This volume is one of them. It is a compilation of writings on the combined theme of knowledge management and business model innovation. The editor anticipates that this book will ‘unravel some of the key aspects of knowledge management as the enabler of business model innovation’. Accordingly, this book is divided into four sections, each concerned with one of those aspects. Part 1 is concerned with knowledge management frameworks, Part 2 with working methods, Part 3 with valuing knowledge assets, and Part 4 with organisational, behavioural and technological aspects of knowledge management. The book as a whole is intended to complement an earlier title Knowledge Management and Virtual Organizations, which focused primarily on knowledge management as an enabler of virtual organisations and communities of practice. The first section establishes a focus on theory building. The second section is more about new business models with much less focus on knowledge management as an enabler. Implicit here is the assumption that knowledge work is a necessary condition for the existence of virtual organisations. The third section is an interesting attempt to develop some metrics for the valuation of knowledge assets. The final section is a miscellany, being more variously descriptive in surveying applications. The collection has great value in providing guidelines to assist practitioners and information professionals in the management of knowledge. In general, it benefits from adopting a broader approach, and from the scope offered by the theme of business model innovation. As well as discussing emergent new ideas and developments, the collection presents an insightful retrospective panorama of the knowledge management field. It is definitely well worth reading if you wish to become better informed about developments in theoretical frameworks, about state-of-the-art methods and innovative practices. There is one note of caution, however. Four articles were reprinted from other sources, in each case a quite recent publication (2000). The inclusion of these articles seems a little unnecessary. The book excels in literature review, referring to works with a wide range of perspectives from philosophy to computational intelligence, highlighting the multidisciplinary dimension of the IS field. It is refreshing to see recognised in the literature the efforts of the Artificial Intelligence community to put technology at the service of knowledge management. Inevitably, given that this is a compilation of complete and self-contained chapters, there is some overlapping of literature reviews across the volume as a whole. Of the 25 chapters, 11 are particularly noteworthy. Michael Zach (Chapter II) gives a very insightful contribution to knowledge-based theories of the firm. Meadows, Marshall and Jain (Chapter III) present a robust effort to provide managers with practical guidance on the management of knowledge resources. This guidance is summarised in the Knowledge Matrix, a framework for mapping the organisational knowledge resources according to their strategic importance. Their expectation of the Matrix becoming a common language among managers is rather premature, although its use would likely help fulfil a need for standards. Andreu and Sieber (Chapter IV) make explicit the relation between types of knowledge structures and how they affect the individual learning process, interestingly and appropriately bringing together literature on Organisational Learning and Knowledge Management. It is implicit that by managing knowledge structures one can improve organisational knowledge, although this cause–effect relation is not fully elaborated on. Ratcheva and Vyakarnam (Chapter X) provide a process perspective for researching virtual team functions and interaction patterns. Findings from their study are of much relevance to managers regarding virtual team design. Donna Weaver McCloskey’s article (Chapter XI) is one of the highlights of this collection rigour and in its managerial implications. The author investigates the impact that telecommuting would have on work characteristics (that is, autonomy, work–family conflict, role ambiguity, and role conflict), which in turn affect three critical work outcomes (that is, job satisfaction, career advancement prospects, and turnover intentions). The greatest practical implication of this investigation is that it contradicts a number of beliefs about telecommuting. Kimble, Hildreth and Wright (Chapter XIII) investigate whether the Community of Practice concept might translate to a geographically distributed international environment. To this end, the authors offer a well-presented case study of a major international company to explore the functioning of a Community of Practice across national and cultural boundaries. Nick Bontis (Chapter XVI) offers an extensive literature review from a variety of managerial disciplines, bringing together various perspectives on the concept of intellectual capital. The author proposes a conceptualisation of intellectual capital, suggesting two drivers for its development: trust and culture. Fons Wijnhoven (Chapter XVII) complements Bontis in the sense that he adds an interesting dimension to the debate of knowledge valuation and metrics by arguing for the need of subjective valuation methods. Gordon’s lengthy article (Chapter XX) incorporates rich material from the experience and practice of the global marketing, consulting and teaching firm Frost and Sullivan. Truex, Baskerville and Klein (Chapter XXI) present issues of great relevance to Information Systems developers. Arguing that the notion of organisational stability is implicit to the now obsolete traditional goals for IS development, they propose an alternative goal-set that is more relevant to today’s emergent organisations. Herschel and Nemati (Chapter XXIV) examine the rationale for the existence of a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) function providing useful guidelines to managers. It raises and explores the importance of the implicit-to-explicit knowledge conversion process to a CKO’s knowledge management programme. The book provides an extended coverage of concepts. Overall, it represents a substantial effort to provide some muchneeded convergence of meaning, particularly with concepts European Journal of Information Systems (2002) 296–297 & 2002 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/02 $15.00