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The purpose of this paper is to convey background and historical settings on the evolution of knowledge management research and practices since the late 1990s in programs of The George Washington University (GWU), Washington, DC. The settings aim to support the papers of a special issue of the journal for exploring the future of knowledge workers in the twenty‐first century.

The paper uses historical data drawn from dissertations, books, discussions and active participation through a ten‐year community of interest (COI) comprising scholars and practitioners. This COI functions within the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation (GWU‐IKI) and the inputs are augmented with references to literature on KM and knowledge workers.

The overall viewpoint leverages off the theme that the youngest of the workforce generations, the Millennials, born since 1981, are 76 million strong and rapidly coming of age. Furthermore, through a natural process of evolution, they are already coping with the virtual real time, simultaneous, social networking of the cloud computing, cyberspace demands that are generally seen as being overwhelming and beyond the “normal” human capacities for many in the older generations.

Viewpoints expressed on the multigenerational group of current and future knowledge workers, i.e. Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, GenXers and Millennials are extremely narrow and summary in nature. Reference to these segments of the workforce is limited to the context of this background setting, but extensive literature and active media coverage openly exists for each generation.

The paper gives readers insights into the contents of the 11 papers comprising the special issue. Future traits, skills, aptitudes of workers, challenges of projected multi‐dimensional environments, real life practices for culture transformations, and emphasis on lifelong learning to cope with the escalating changes of the connected global society are highlighted.

Children quickly adapt to change and often become the language and culture guides to adults in foreign environments. The Millennials, youngest generation of knowledge workers, will guide the global workforce through the chaos, complexity and intellectual capacity overburden of the early twenty‐first century cyber‐socialization.

This paper aims to look at the culture of federal workers and some reasons why workers may or may not want to share knowledge among their peers. To overcome the resistance to knowledge sharing, the paper seeks to explore the benefits of having a knowledge management facilitator with experience in the social professions guiding an agency toward becoming a team learning organization. The objective is to show how cultural changes among the federal workers can enable them to participate in team learning and achieve their fullest potential in their careers and their personal lives. Through employee enrichment, federal organizations can enable their workers to achieve new goals, which in turn can promote improved efficiency, innovation, and effectiveness within the organization.

Some federal agencies have a strong KM program in place that applies the concepts involving people, processes, learning and technology as part of their culture. Others have focused on the technology aspect of KM, while resisting incorporation of the remaining elements that are necessary to sustain a knowledge‐sharing culture. Although more investigation is needed to determine each federal agency's position on knowledge management, one thing is certain – encouraging individuals to reach their fullest potential will have a beneficial impact among federal agencies and encourage knowledge sharing among the workforce.

The paper illustrates that addressing the people aspect of KM is an important step that can provide a foundation for establishing a sound knowledge management program throughout the federal government. Focusing on the individual workers, it is necessary to keep in mind the systems approach to KM and incorporate appropriate elements of the system, as individuals are encouraged to participate in the knowledge management process. The paper provides certainty that implementing a sound KM program will benefit today's federal knowledge worker and further the growth of the future knowledge worker in the 2020 decade.

The paper improves the efficiency of the federal workforce.

The paper acknowledges the federal worker's value, which instils a commitment of the federal knowledge worker and stimulates employee creativity.

The paper provides insight into the culture of federal workers and changes that can be made to improve the innovation, efficiency and effectiveness of the federal work force.

While the gap between economic theory and companies’ practice, regarding to the pricing setting, has been extensively explored and explained, the new gap between the marketing normative view and companies’ practice needs further clarification. In this way, the paper aims to investigate whether marketing researchers’ claim that the use of cost-based price approach prevails over the use of value-based price approach is pertinent.

The paper is guided by the following research question: “Does price-setting based on cost plus margin go against the value-based price approach?” The answer to this question is grounded in reflections on results of previous research studies and in a case study conducted in an industrial company. Because of the qualitative focus of the present study, hypotheses are not established, but rather the following proposition: certain companies use the mechanics of cost plus margin in the sale price-setting process, but it does not necessarily mean that these companies set prices based on cost.

The arguments, propositions and the case study findings provide the logical sequence and the support required to conclude that price-setting based on cost plus margin does not always conflict with the value-based price approach. As a result, it may be claimed that the general proposition established is theoretically valid, i.e. using a price formula that contains the elements cost and margin does not necessarily mean that the company sets prices based on cost.

The key contribution of this paper is demonstrating that in certain business environments, such as, B2B, using the price formation mechanics based on cost plus margin is the way found by companies to enable the approach adopted. The approach may be cost-based or value-based price. This is the first study that explicitly reveals how B2B companies may set prices based on value while simultaneously preserving the simplicity of cost plus margin formulas. Researchers have significant misconceptions about these formulas: in previous studies, they classified all price-making companies as those adopting the cost-based price approach simply because they used formulas containing the element cost.

Enterprises are supportive of knowledge management (KM) activities if they result in “actionable information” that relates to achieving strategic and operational goals and improved performance. KM individuals and corporate practitioners have evolved multiple approaches to creating the discrete steps required to design, implement and measure knowledge management systems (KMS) that meet the “actionable information” expectation of organizations. However, there is no universally acclaimed standard or best practice readily embraced, the purpose of this article, therefore, is to investigate a process for a comprehensive KMS.

This article describes and analyzes five such approaches to an effective KMS; two are derived from academic sources and three from name recognizable practitioner corporations. The five use eight‐, nine‐ and ten‐step constructs for their KMSs.

The study found many similarities but were also able to project a 12‐step hybrid approach which combines all the best features of the five analyzed. Furthermore, the 12 steps are then logically distributed among the George Washington University “Four Pillar Framework” promulgated in 2000 and reflecting the four domains of leadership – organization – technology – learning which have consistently shown the capability to encompass all aspects of effective knowledge sharing and collaborative cultures. The 12‐step process is then put through a sensitivity/realism assessment using an actual configuration management application to demonstrate the utility of the process for future uses.

Ultimately, the various groupings and process steps described also lend themselves to the creation of an analysis and auditing instrument which can be applied to organizational environments to ascertain what exists and what is lacking for an effective KMS.

This article seeks to discuss a balanced and effective holistic knowledge management (KM) framework, which consists of four key domains postulated and validated in the late 1990s and 2000 as The George Washington University (GWU) four‐pillar KM framework: leadership, organization, technology, and learning.

The two conceptual organizational models of an “adaptive enterprise” and “agile enterprise” are briefly described, their utility challenged and a request launched for empirical findings documenting the organizational implementations and linkages to leadership, technology and learning with attendant performance results.

The twenty‐first century has surfaced the need for more flexible and responsive knowledge‐based organizational entities capable of rapidly adjusting to the increasing rate of change and demands in both products and services.

Provides an insight into the George Washington University four‐pillar KM framework.

The Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington University advocates “theory to practice – a continuum” in the University's knowledge management (KM) graduate programs. At the practice end, guidelines for “eight easy steps to a KM system for improving business performance” were initiated as a tool for their students in the Fall of 2000. Aims to address the issues surrounding this.

This paper applies the eight step guidelines to a hypothetical internet bank to create a knowledge collaborative environment and integrated repository to improve the effectiveness of the bank's customer response team function.

Correlating changes in business processes to take advantage of benefits from a collaborative knowledge sharing environment can be enhanced using a systems approach to tie the knowledge facets to the enterprise's purpose for being. Employees will more readily accept changes in their work habits if there are clearly defined processes that assist in getting improved results with subsequent positive performance recognition for the employee. Managers will more readily embrace KM if a clear “cause and effect” trail leads to overall improved effectiveness fostering the enterprise's growth, stability and positive image.

This paper helps all those involved with KM to identify knowledge gaps, opportunities and risks.

The purpose of this paper is to mobilize organizations to look at knowledge management through the lens of the individuals whose knowledge they covet and to seek to leverage in order to establish a faster, more flexible and mutually supportive conduit to relevant knowledge and more sustainable knowledge contributions.

This is a discussion paper based on the authors' recent dissertation thesis: “A theoretical model of knowledge strategies for professionals in volatile business settings”.

Organizations can no longer promise lifelong employment even to their best employees. Striving to safeguard employability instead, organizations and individuals can recalibrate the contributive value of their knowledge in a mutually‐ beneficial way even in short‐term, medium‐term or highly volatile employment settings. The resulting bottom‐up approach for managing personal knowledge reduces the friction and mistrust often associated with top‐down knowledge management. It sets the stage for an environment that manages for knowledge, both individually and collectively.

Some individuals have learned to navigate the emerging knowledge economy successfully and craft sustainable value propositions for themselves based on what they know. The research identified the concept of knowledge empowerment and six knowledge strategies and their supporting elements as key enablers for this success. One of these strategies – Lifelong Learning – is explored in detail to demonstrate the transformational power of an additional vantage point that considers individuals as stakeholders and not just as contributors in the knowledge quest. This resets the responsibility for knowledge acquisition, creation and leverage and establishes the need for more extensive personal knowledge management as a subset of organizational knowledge management. This aspect of knowledge management has only been marginally explored in the knowledge management literature to date.

The leader of the knowledge‐based organization is faced with the continuing dilemma of delivering the highest quality and most technologically innovative products or services at the lowest possible cost in a rapidly changing environment. This paper aims to start with the identification of the complexities of managing the knowledge‐based organization, using emotional intelligence to balance the interests of the individual and organization, and it may also be redefined as an organizational development process rather than an outcome.

In order to be effective the knowledge‐based leader must possess the characteristics most often associated with the description of emotional intelligence and must also be effective at injecting these same characteristics throughout the organization. Utilizing the premises of Stewart's intellectual economy and adapting the work of Buckingham and Coffman to the knowledge‐based organization, a series of questions is outlined to assist leaders, managers and workers in the improvement of emotional intelligence awareness and the utilization of emotional intelligence as an organizational development process.

Knowledge‐based organizations may benefit from the utilization of behaviors most often attributed to emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence may be redefined as a process rather than an outcome for organizational development.

The knowledge working environment must utilize innovative processes to maintain the engagement and effectiveness of the workforce. Applying emotional intelligence as an organizational development process rather than an outcome, it becomes a strategy for the development of the individual and the organization concurrently rather than treating them as opposing interests.

This study seeks to present observations on the impact of Chinese culture traits on knowledge management practices in Chinese corporations.

The paper presents an analysis of the authors' own experience as senior managers in implementing a globalization strategy for a leading Chinese domestic IT services company. It specifically focuses on key culture traits that have been proven to directly impact knowledge management practices.

There are deeply rooted culture traits that work counter to the objectives of a knowledge management program within a Chinese corporation. Information sharing is essential counter culture. The authors' experience is that incremental changes that rely on institutionalized systems of information transfer offer hope for the gradual transformation of corporate cultures that foster effective knowledge management practices and increase corporate competitiveness.

This study is by no means exhaustive, but is intended as a starting‐point to explore alternatives for overcoming culture traits that inhibit knowledge transfer.

The study provides a basis for companies including Chinese companies, joint ventures or multi‐national companies operating in China to assess obstacles to effective knowledge management and to consider various alternatives in adopting a knowledge management plan.