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Towards the end of 90s, mounting losses forced Madhya Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (MPSRTC), the sole provider of public transport in Madhya Pradesh, to suspend their urban services. As a consequence, organized public transport services ceased to exist in Indore, the largest metropolitan city of the state of Madhya Pradesh. This void was filled by Intermediate Public Transport (IPT) consisting of minibuses, tempos and auto rickshaws. As of January 2004, 300 private minibuses, 150 tempos, and 10,000 auto rickshaws were plying as IPT, but with poor service levels. Lack of public transport was a catalyst for rapid increase in personalized vehicles, and high level of pollution and accidents. Worried over the rapid growth of personalized vehicles, and high levels of pollution and accidents in Indore, policy makers and administrators had made several attempts of reviving the public transport system in the city. In 2005, the Collector and District Magistrate of Indore decided to make another attempt of reviving the public transport. The two cases, Indore City Bus Transport Service (A) and Indore City Bus Transport Service (B) discuss the complexity involved in the planning, rolling out, and running of public transport services in Indore on a sustainable basis. Case (A) details the prevalent socio-economic condition, travel characteristics, and positions taken by various stakeholders on provisioning of public transport service in Indore as of November 2005. Case (B) discusses the challenges during the growth and operation of the services as of June 2008. Unprecedented rise in crude oil prices along with (i) increase in maintenance cost of buses, price of new buses, and bank interest and (ii) decrease/marginal increase in the fare box revenue (more people were shifting to passes) and advertisement revenue depleted the margin of the operators. The fares had not been increased since the launch of services in February 2006. It was clear that Indore City Transport Service Limited (ICTSL), the SPV created to run the transport system, would survive only if operators were able to survive. The readers have to take the position of the board of ICTSL and consider various options available to them for running the services on a sustainable basis.

There is no single way of achieving business success. The concept of knowledge management (KM) builds on the existing management practices, integrating them into a philosophy for improving performance. This paper aims to understand the various dimensions of KM and how they differ in public and private sector organizations in India. It also attempts to identify the dimensions where one sector is better than the other and areas needing improvement.

The paper uses a sample comprising 16 private and public sector organizations. A convenient sampling scheme was used. The extent of KM practices was evaluated with respect to dimensions, namely process, leadership, technology, culture and measurement.

The paper empirically shows that private sector organizations fare better statistically on all dimensions compared to public sector organizations. Although the private sector is ahead of the public sector on the raw mean scores of various dimensions, it has still a long way to go as the scores are below four on a scale of five. The scores are just satisfactory and there is further scope for improvement.

The study uses a sample of four public sector organizations and the findings may lack generalization. Therefore, it would be interesting to verify the findings using a larger sample size.

The paper can serve as a best practice document for public and private sector organizations interested in adopting KM for improving performance.

The paper tries to bring forth concern areas for KM in Indian public and private sector organizations.

Organization hierarchy plays a crucial role in the effective management of knowledge and learning. Typically, the organization hierarchy includes employees at the top, middle and lower levels. Employees possess a wealth of knowledge but often knowledge‐driven learning across organization hierarchies is not uniform due to various factors pertaining to the employees such as their literacy levels, available‐time, access to resources, reward and recognition, mindset, level of empowerment etc. This paper attempts to compare how employees at the top and middle level hierarchies in Indian organizations perceive a learning organization (LO). It also attempts to understand how the dimensions of knowledge management (KM) influence LO and tests whether this is significantly different for the aforementioned two hierarchy levels.

A convenience sample of 57 top and middle level executives from India participated in the study. The extent of learning practices was compared and tested for significant differences across the top and middle level hierarchies.

A comparison of the mean scores shows that there is hardly any difference in the way executives at the two levels perceive LO. All the mean scores are below five on a scale of six, pointing to scope for improvement. Further, no statistical difference is found in the mean scores. The impact of KM dimensions on LO was found to be statistically insignificant for the two levels. Most of the KM dimensions were found to positively impact the LO as per the proposed hypothesis.

The sample comprises 34 responses from top and 17 from middle level executives. This small sample size can be largely attributed to respondents' reluctance, especially of those from the public sector organizations, to openly share their views. A larger representation of respondents from the middle level hierarchy would certainly enhance the generalization of results. This low response rate has limited the use of the regression analysis technique as against any other powerful explanatory techniques.

The findings of this study can provide insights to organizations on the role of hierarchies in the management of knowledge and learning which can, in turn, help in developing best practices to manage the same.

The paper addresses the paucity of empirical research done to examine whether top and middle level executives perceive LO differently. It also studies the impact of KM on LO and provides evidence to demonstrate the difference in perception among different hierarchy levels. The value added is in identifying future areas of research by extending this synergy between KM and LO to enhance performance and competitiveness. This approach could be adopted to examine the relationship in different socio‐economic contexts and cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to study Knowledge Management (KM) implementation in Indian manufacturing, IT and IT Enabled Services (ITES) and power generation and distribution companies. Various dimensions of KM, namely: process, leadership, culture, technology, and measurement are compared across the three industries to understand the differences in KM practices.

Samples comprised 17 responses from ITES, 32 from manufacturing and eight from power generation and distribution organizations. Convenient sampling scheme was used. The paper reports the findings of the difference in KM practices with respect to the organizations' use of the above mentioned dimensions across the three industries.

The raw mean score of various dimensions for ITES is the highest followed by manufacturing, and power generation and distribution on all except the leadership dimension. However, one way ANOVA results indicate that no significant difference is found for KM process, culture and technology. Statistical difference is found on the remaining two dimensions, namely, leadership and measurement, which are further analysed.

The study includes 17 responses from ITES and eight from power generation and distribution. A larger sample from these two industries may enhance generalizability of results.

Findings of the study can serve as input to companies from the three industries in developing best practices across KM dimensions for improving performance.

While KM has been studied in Indian manufacturing, pharmaceutical and IT industries, its comparison across industries has not been carried out.