Preface for the Third Edition - Read

538 C. State of Practice
minority of the organizations. These more advanced contents were only present in
organizations which had already undergone a more advanced KM approach.
Factor three can be called unapproved contributions in knowledge networks
and is reflected by the items knowledge about business partners (customer and
supplier relationship knowledge), a directory of communities and ideas and proposals.
The knowledge described by this factor can be characterized as formally
unapproved ideas for the development of new knowledge. These ideas are contributed
to communities, teams and workgroups and lead to knowledge networking
within the organization and with business partners. Knowledge about business
partners was one of the three most reported items in this study with a share of two
thirds of the organizations (66.7%). As communities were at the point of the study
not a wide-spread organizational phenomenon, it is not surprising that only about a
third of the organizations had directories of communities in place (31.3%). In about
half of the organizations (47.9%) ideas and proposals were part of the KMS.
Factor four can be called secured inventions and is devoted to precisely defined
knowledge products which are secured from being used by the competition. It comprises
the items external patents and patents held by the organization. As patents
play a much more important role in the industry sector than in the service sector
(Spearman’s rho: 0.372, significance: 0.009, n=48 for internal patents, Spearman’s
rho: 0.338, significance: 0.019, n=48 for external patents), it is not surprising that
only about a quarter of the organizations had patents in their KMS. The two items
were highly correlated which means that if an organization handled patents, it
stored both, internal and external patents (Spearman’s rho: 0.514, significance:
0.00018, n=48).
The fifth factor can be called personal contents. It comprises contents that are
related to private, out of workspace interest of the employees which is reflected by
the item private contents held by about one third of the organizations (32.7%). The
item knowledge about the organization and processes loads partly on this factor,
too, which might be explained as describing the individual employees’ relationship
to the organization. The factor does not necessarily describe knowledge in a narrow
sense, as private homepages or contact platforms (e.g., to find sport partners) all
fall into this category.
It was supposed that the question whether personal contents are allowed into a
corporate KMS correlates with an open organizational culture encouraging knowledge
sharing among employees, even outside the traditional work environment.
The corresponding correlations between the factor personal contents and the four
factors of willingness to share knowledge 104 all showed the expected negative
sign. This means that knowledge sharing outside the workspace tended to be higher
for organizations that allowed private contents as part of their KMS. However, the
correlations were not significant 105 . Hypothesis 14: ’If an organization allows private
contents as part of their knowledge management systems, willingness to share
knowledge is higher’ was not supported.
104. See section 13.2.1 - “Willingness to share knowledge” on page 512.