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Leaders of successful organizations are consistently searching for better ways to improve performance and results. Frequent disappointments with past management initiatives have motivated managers to gain new understandings into the underlying, but complex mechanisms ‐ such as knowledge ‐ which govern an enterprise’s effectiveness. Knowledge Management, far from being a management “fad”, is broad, multi‐dimensional and covers most aspects of the enterprise’s activities. To be competitive and successful, experience shows that enterprises must create and sustain a balanced intellectual capital portfolio. They need to set broad priorities and integrate the goals of managing intellectual capital and the corresponding effective knowledge processes. This requires systematic Knowledge Management. With knowledge as the major driving force behind the “economics of ideas”, we can expect that the emphasis on knowledge creation, development, organization and leverage will continue to be the prime focus for improving society.

Globalization has placed businesses everywhere in new and different competitive situations where knowledgeable, effective behavior has come to provide the competitive edge. Enterprises have turned to explicit and systematic knowledge management (KM) to develop the intellectual capital needed to succeed. Further developments are expected to provide considerable benefits resulting from changes in the workplace and in management and operational practices. Changes will partly come from information technology and artificial intelligence developments. However, more important changes are expected in people‐centric practices to build, apply, and deploy knowledge and understanding for support of innovative and effective knowledge‐intensive work. Much remains to be done. Next generation KM methods will still be crude. Our understanding of knowledge and how people use it to work has a long way to go. We need a“theory of knowledge” and perhaps a new theory of the firm to create a solid foundation for future KM. Still, users can expect significant benefits from KM as it develops over the next decades.

Knowledge management (KM) plays important roles in public administration (PA). Each role serves specific constituencies and purposes and is implemented differently. Jointly, they build society’s intellectual capital (IC) to improve the effectiveness of public and private decision making and situation handling. Four public administration KM areas are considered: enhance decision making within public services; aid the public to participate effectively in public decision making; build competitive societal IC capabilities; and develop a knowledge‐competitive work force. Numerous KM approaches are adopted to serve these purposes. Most efforts address specific needs. Only few pursue broad, deliberate, and systematic KM. Examples of these approaches and perspectives are discussed. The premise for KM is that, among many factors, effective and intelligent behavior depends on having appropriate understanding in addition to being informed.

An international survey, sponsored by the Journal of Knowledge Management in association with the Best Practice Club™ and The Benchmarking Exchange, sought to explore the drivers and approaches to creating knowledge‐based organizations from the viewpoint of those practitioners who are actually responsible for implementing Knowledge Management as a business strategy. Three major conclusions have emerged from the study. Whilst organizations recognize the importance of creating, managing and transferring knowledge, so far they have been unable to translate this competitive need into organizational strategies. Secondly, successful Knowledge Management implementation is mainly linked to “soft” issues, such as organizational culture and people. Finally, most organizations are struggling to effectively use Knowledge Management tools and techniques. The study reveals that although most of the survey group understood the commercial or institutional imperative to implement Knowledge Management as an organizational strategy, few benchmarks of best practice have yet to emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest principles and framework for comprehensive societal knowledge management (SKM) for countries to provide acceptable conditions for their citizens and businesses and to participate equitable in the globalized knowledge economy.

Foundations for SKM principles and framework are based on requirements and practical experiences reported in literature and expanded by the author's work and concepts.

Comprehensive SKM is not commonly pursued in spite of its importance for national survival. Many countries need SKM guidelines and concepts and will benefit by development of an acceptable and well‐substantiated framework.

Extensive research should be pursued in scientific, economic, social, and educational fields to identify good SKM options. Understanding must be developed of how best to undertake SKM.

Implications are that comprehensive SKM by nations promises to improve quality‐of‐life worldwide.

Notwithstanding the need for a comprehensive SKM framework, little work has been available until now.

Based on the findings of a large‐scale benchmarking study, this article highlights the strategies employed by best‐practice organizations to identify, capture, and leverage knowledge. Supported by case study examples from several companies, descriptions of six emerging knowledge management strategies discovered during the benchmarking process are provided. The article reveals how organizations seek to incorporate various knowledge management approaches into their business and sheds light on the changing nature of knowledge management in general.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how knowledge is currently being collected, distributed, managed and the perspective of knowledge management's (KM) strategic significance to performance within a broad range of Hong Kong organizations.

A questionnaire was administered to a broad cross‐section of Hong Kong business organizations to elicit input regarding current KM practices within the organization, their perspective on its value to organizational performance and competitive advantages.

The results indicate a fuzziness exists concerning KM's potential benefits. Majority of respondents felt a KM policy existed, while a smaller number did not and even less did not know. Findings show a high dependence on personal networks and a high use of information technology tools such as intranet, Groupware, and other decision support tools. Barriers to sharing included power loss, appearing dependent, a basic unwillingness to share with national culture possibly playing a role. Incentives did not appear to encourage sharing with management of KM programs not focused on a particular department or individual. Respondents were evenly divided over strategic benefits but felt the existence of an internal culture that promoted sharing could result in competitive market advantages.

First, it provides a better understanding of KM issues within Hong Kong organizations, the current status of KM's implementation and readiness to accept and adopt best KM practices. Second, the findings also offer business practitioners a better understanding of the internal mechanisms necessary to leverage a firm's specific resources. Finally, the results shed additional clarity on the fuzziness surrounding KM's correlation to being strategically significant to the firm.

Unlike previous studies, the paper uses a holistic approach as opposed to best practices firms. The findings contribute to previous research and provide insights into current practices which identified differences and gaps; recognized areas of improvement; and should help stimulate use of KM and provided an understanding of internal mechanisms necessary to leverage internal resources.

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the development of knowledge management so as to argue whether knowledge management (KM) is a multidisciplinary field.

To set the scene by reviewing and synthesizing the scholarly works and published practices of knowledge management, this paper presents an overview of the recent and rapidly growing literature on knowledge management.

The paper presents a discussion, addressing the question of what those disciplines are on which knowledge management discourse is exactly drawn on. The fact is that knowledge management draws from a wide range of disciplines. Although scholars from several disciplines attempt to claim ownership of the knowledge management, today both practitioners and academics alike recognize that knowledge management is an eclectic field rather than grounded in a specific ideology.

The paper does not offer comprehensive understanding of the disciplinary roots of knowledge management because it has not reviewed all the papers available in KM.

The paper does raise awareness of the genesis of knowledge management. It will encourage insightful managers to examine this research in more depth as a means of guidance for making use of KM initiatives in their organization.

Highlighting the growing interest in knowledge management, the paper inspires knowledge management researchers to be rigorous in both disciplinary grounding and integration. Although the paper does not attempt to detail the origins and the gradual development of the KM field, it contributes to improving theory, practice, and pedagogy in the field of KM by articulating its origin.

This paper introduces some of the elements of Knowledge Management and outlines the approaches RM Consulting ‐ the internal consultancy of the Royal Mail and the Post Office ‐ is taking to support the development of knowledge enablers within the organization. A Knowledge Management approach is described which focuses on people (including the organizational structure), processes and technology. The initial Knowledge Management focus of the organization is aimed principally on explicit knowledge, and the establishment of tools which help to capture internal information. The long‐term challenge is to capture the knowledge of the organization in such a way that all of its employees can maximize the value they provide to the organization’s stakeholders.