A Multi-Faceted Analysis of Knowledge Management Systems.

Abstract As stressed by many academics and practitioners, knowledge is the key source for competitive advantage in modern organizations. These authors have come to realize that knowledge management is the key to organizational performance and survival in continuously changing economic, technological, political, and social environment. To be effective, deployment of knowledge management within organizations requires support materialized by knowledge management systems. Nevertheless, despite the richness of the literature on knowledge management systems, the definitions proposed for this concept are largely technology-oriented. This restrictive view which considers knowledge management systems as software tools, resulted in the failure of knowledge management in many organizations. We think that knowledge management systems have four important facets - a technological facet, a human resources facet, a process facet, and a context facet – which determine the drivers of their effectiveness. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model - based on the structuration theory - which demonstrates that the importance and the characteristics of the four facets of knowledge management systems depend on the knowledge management strategy, the knowledge management activities, and the external environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]