Tug-Of-War in KM Projects: A Strategic Renewal Perspective

Despite the numerous success stories of organizations that have responded to external and internal stimuli to become knowledge-based, a number of organizations are still struggling to achieve the proposed benefits of managing their knowledge assets. By viewing KM as a strategic renewal process and studying the impact and interaction of strategic renewal forces with KM process forces, this paper aims to understand why KM projects fail to obtain organization-wide support. We analyze the qualitative data collected from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The case revealed that the strength of ADB’s forces that pushed it towards becoming a learning organization were insufficient to overcome the inertial forces exerted by the strategy, culture and structure of the bank. In addition, it was found that structures and processes to integrate the knowledge that was generated were inadequate. The result of these forces has left the ADB moving away from its goal of becoming a learning organization.