Are You Ready for the Right Knowledge Management Strategy: Identifying the Potential Restrains Using the Action Space Approach

Prior studies have identified two major approaches of managing organizational knowledge assets: Codification and Personalization. The decision regarding which of the two major knowledge management (KM) approaches to adopt for an organization is a function of the organization’s core business, the competence so required, technological complexity of the critical processes responsible for the value adding, and the organizational culture. The KM strategy chosen by the firm must support its business strategy. The adoption and the implementation of a selected approach is however not always a straight forward task. There can be restrains that hinder the adoption and implementation process. These retrains come from multiple sources: Complexity of the problem domain, an overwhelming technical professionalism that restricts participation of the non-technical employees, and an overly authoritarian organizational culture that does not encourage too much democracy among employees. In order for the selected KM strategy to be implemented successfully, such restrains will need to be identified and diffused. In this current paper, we discuss the applicability of the Action Space framework as a diagnostic instrument for identifying the sources of retrains that may hinder the implementation of a selected KM strategy.