Preface for the Third Edition - Read

502 C. State of Practice
responsible for exactly this (list of) topic(s). Supposedly, there are a much larger
number of subject matter specialists than the number of knowledge managers.
Also, subject matter specialists are supposedly formally recognized in the respective
organizations. Thus, it is assumed that to assign responsibility to a subject matter
specialist is less central than to assign responsibility to a knowledge manager.
Lastly, to assign responsibility to the participants means a decentralized approach,
because every employee with access to KMS is responsible for the respective
knowledge process or task.
In the following, the results are presented for all tasks according to the organizational
design variables (de-) centralization and roles responsible for the tasks 48 .
Figure C-9 shows the distribution of responsibility to the KM roles according to
the eleven KM tasks as defined above.
refinement of
existing k.
(semantic)
release
of new k.
identification of k.
selling k.
update of structure
distribution of k.
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
storing of new k.
FIGURE C-9. Responsibility for KM-related tasks assigned to knowledge
management roles 49
integration of k.
in existing
structure
quality assurance
of k.
deletion/
archiving of k.
acquisition of external k.
participant subject matter specialist knowledge manager/integrator
48. The detailed results for the individual tasks can be found in URL: http://iwi.uibk.ac.at/
maier/kms/.
49. Legend: k.=knowledge.