Preface for the Third Edition - Read

13. Organization 509
whether his or her role requires access to KM-related systems. Consequently, in
these types of organizations the rate of KM activity is much lower (less than
25%) than in the rest of the organizations.
Thus, the rate of KM activity is negatively correlated with the rate of participation
in a KM effort. Most organizations have a high rate of KM activity with more
than 10% of the targeted employees actively participating in a KM initiative.
Communities are not a widespread organizational phenomenon with about a
quarter of the respondents reporting the number of communities they had established.
Although in most cases there were only a handful of communities established,
organizations generally seem to pay a lot of attention to supporting informal
knowledge networks and the informal exchange of knowledge. Some of the organizations
might not have been familiar with the concept of communities.
Structural organization. Organizations vary according to the structural organization
of their KM function. If an organization had established a separate organizational
unit that provided other areas with e.g., studies or reports thus assuming the
role of an information broker before, this organizational unit was likely to be
turned into a separate KM unit. The unit’s responsibility was extended to broaden
its perspective to include KM and to introduce and support KM-specific organizational
and ICT instruments. Many professional services companies have followed
this approach providing case studies highly visible in the KM literature. In the
study presented here, less than a quarter of the organizations with a systematic KM
initiative actually had established a separate KM unit.
In more than a quarter of the organizations KM was advanced in the organization
by an informal group of employees interested in KM. This could be a network
of employees, a committee or a community with varying degrees of support from
formal authorities. The most prevalent form of structural organizational design
applied to KM, however, was the KM project. Projects were established in almost
half of the organizations.
In many organizations, KM quickly gains high visibility and its efforts are
closely watched by senior management. Many CEOs even of large corporations
such as Siemens and DaimlerChrysler have put KM on their agendas. This is
reflected by the high reporting level of KM. Most of the KM initiatives reported to
the two highest levels of the organizational hierarchy.
More than a third of the organizations did not integrate KM within a single functional
area, but employed an interdisciplinary approach which is regularly considered
most suited for this kind of activity. There is also a shift from exclusively
embedding KM in a technical environment, especially IT, to an involvement of
business-oriented areas responsible for KM, such as strategic development, marketing
or sales. Whereas a couple of years ago the establishment of an information
and communication platform—Groupware and Intranet—required most attention,
organizations now have sophisticated functions implemented and are in search of
concepts, measures and instruments to effectively use these platforms for KM 53 .