The success criteria for implementing knowledge management systems in an organization

The main objective of this dissertation is to explore both the technological and organizational aspects of the success criteria of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS), and focus on the process of building an organizational knowledge base for operational knowledge reuse. In a time of change, more organizations are deploying a variety of Knowledge Management Systems to enhance business processes and performance. Information and communication technology (ICT) has provided abundant tools and utilities to enable such systems. After nearly a decade of practice in knowledge management, the results are mixed at best and the type of systems utilized are very diverse and often fragmented in infrastructure. In identifying these enabling criteria in a knowledge management system, the author wishes to aid in the future analysis, design, and evaluation of successfully utilizing such systems. This study is divided in two parts. Part I focuses on building a knowledge process model in the framework of information systems (IS) and acquiring all the functional and structural attributes. The model uses information systems commonly utilized in providing products or services to enlist most of the organizational and technological attributes. A generic knowledge management system is characterized as an input-system-output workflow with which a knowledge worker can interact to enhance the service or product. Part II validates the criteria identified in the model and analyzes data gathered utilizing surveys of knowledge workers in various industries. The analysis of the data collected in exploratory interviews also gave us the opportunity to see how much the industry was still fragmented and what was most important in terms of implementing a KMS. The key findings are both the technological and organizational enablers/criteria that make the KMS more effective, or encourage the knowledge workers to more routinely interact with the knowledge base. Technologically, we found scalability, adaptability, transparency, dependability, and personalization to be most important when specifically referring to the KMS itself. Organizationally, time and monetary resources, corporate culture, evaluation, business alignment, and training influence the effectiveness of KMS initiative the most. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of the KMS success model and criteria. The unique aspect of this research is the utilization of the knowledge worker perspective as opposed to the managerial point of view most commonly used in this type of research.