Integrating Current Practices and Information Systems in KM Initiatives - A Knowledge Management Audit Approach

Researchers and practitioners in the field of knowledge management have observed the need of performing studies to understand the context and specific knowledge workers’ needs before proposing strategies or systems that may not be entirely useful for organizations, resulting in costly and unsuccessful knowledge management projects. Different approaches have been proposed to face this problem, such as process engineering techniques to integrate knowledge management in business processes, and also knowledge audits to identify the knowledge and knowledge problems in organizations. This paper draws on the idea of the knowledge audit to propose a methodology for knowledge management audits, which integrates process engineering techniques and the main tasks of knowledge audits. The methodology was developed based on one of our previous works, literature review, and our own experience in field studies. The methodology, its constitutive phases and main tasks, together with some aspects about its use in field studies, including benefits and weaknesses, are described.