Managing organizational knowledge: developing a strategy for a professional services company

The aim of this paper is to identify the benefits of an improved Knowledge Management (KM) strategy for a small/medium-sized professional services firm. The research examined how the three epistemological views (cognitivistic, connectionistic and autopoietic) influenced the management and use of organizational knowledge via the company intranet. The Intranet Evaluation Model (Skok and Kalmanovitch, 2005) was selected to evaluate the company's KM strategy and was extended to emphasize group, cultural and external aspects. Knowledge Evaluation Maps were used to present findings in a revealing graphical display. The results indicated that the company's KM strategy should focus on the high-value tacit knowledge of experts, develop the intranet in a connectionistic form, build upon existing knowledge activities and initiate more group activities. A knowledge steward should be appointed to motivate management and staff, and to overcome possible barriers to management buy-in and a knowledge silo culture. Furthermore, it was found that for small/medium-sized professional service firms, knowledge can be used as the enabler of competitive advantage but that the epistemologies within the firm should be considered when evaluating a KM strategy. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.