The Business Value of Knowledge Management

Knowledge has been recognized as a critical competitive asset and research about knowledge management (KM) has received increasing attention. However, knowledge has also been viewed not only as an asset, but as a process that includes acquiring, organizing, and communicating the knowledge of organizational members. Additionally, organizational culture has been shown to influence the behaviors central to knowledge creation and transfer, and therefore it is proposed that these two contextual factors will have a positive relationship to business value. Using a survey of IT executives, this study empirically tests these relationships and shows a significant relationship exists between KM process implementation and business value as well as between organizational culture and business value. Practical and research implications are discussed.