Preface for the Third Edition - Read

15. Economics 579
The relationship between KM expenses per participant and the estimated general
support of business goals was the only significant correlation in the comprehensive
correlation analysis as depicted in Table C-54. The more the organizations
spent on KM, the more they estimated that this initiative positively affected business
goals. The second measure, the number of KM staff also showed the expected
positive sign and came close to the significance level. The corresponding Hypothesis
23: ’The more rigorously knowledge management is established in an organization,
the more business goals are achieved in that organization’ was supported.
All in all, the data presented shows a tendency that the organizational design
influences perception about the support of a KM initiative with respect to business
goals most when compared to systems or types of contents managed. However, we
must not forget that the interpretation of these tendencies is limited to the sample
and needs to be tested in a larger sample in order to be sure about the possible correlations
as suggested here.
15.2.5 Résumé
Many organizations have difficulties to assess success of their KM initiatives. In
many cases, senior executives and skeptics have to be convinced by success stories,
plausible arguments and hints that the competition is engaged in similar initiatives
rather than hard data that investment in KM pays off.
Most organizations seem not to keep track of figures concerning the use of KMS
and KM-related services. Even in those cases in which usage figures are evaluated,
it would be difficult to judge whether the users of KMS actually found and could
apply the knowledge that they looked for. Therefore, the focus is on the estimations
of the support of business goals as the primary success measure in this study.
Consistently with other KM studies, improve speed of innovation is an important
business goal supported by KM. In addition to this rather KM-specific goal,
organizations seem to primarily target the same business goals as used in BPR or
process management projects: improve customer satisfaction, improve productivity
and improve scheduling. Improve growth of organization was ranked lowly in all
KM studies reflecting once again the internal focus of most KM initiatives already
mentioned 153 . KM initiatives attempt to improve primarily the organizations internal
way of handling knowledge in order to achieve traditional business goals oriented
towards value creation rather than environment-oriented goals such as
improve growth, reduce risks and develop new business fields.
The general support of business goals with the help of KM, however, was rated
highly by almost all respondents, showing that respondents were convinced of the
positive, if not directly measurable, impact of their KM initiatives on business performance.
This result is supported by the finding that KM expenses per participant
were positively correlated with estimations of general support of business goals by
KM initiatives.
153. See section 14.2 - “Contents” on page 532.