Competency Enhancement in KM Programs: Understanding The Role of Environmental Interpretation Mechanisms (EIMs)

Abstract

We contribute towards the scarce and emerging research that examines the management of knowledge in geographically dispersed organizations, by comparing the implementation of KM in geographically dispersed organizations with geographically centralized ones. We compare these two forms of organizations within the context of two gaps in current KM research. Firstly, we need to move away from the mere identification of general competencies (or critical success factors) for KM to understanding how organizations enhance their organizational competencies while implementing their KM program. Secondly, given that the implementation of KM programs have been shown to be inextricably influenced by the environment, there is a need to understand the influence of the environment on this process. To address these gaps, this thesis presents an analysis of the KM programs at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a geographically centralized organization, and the British Council (BC), a geographically dispersed organization.