Including Consumers in the Organisational Knowledge Network

• Author: Bruce Perrott
• Published date: 01 October 2015
• Date: 01 October 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1492

■Research Article

Including Consumers in the

Organisational Knowledge Network

Bruce Perrott*

UTS Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

This article is intended to build a better understanding of the knowledge dynamics in organisations and the role com-

munities of practice play in facilitating the effective flow and application of knowledge.

Exploring the dimensions of knowledge dynamics in organisations, this article highlights the critical role communities

of practice play in healthcare organisation operations. Readers will gain new insights into the role they play in the

knowledge dynamics of organisations. From the insights gained from pilot studies in health care, the article suggests

that the concept of communities of practice can be extended to include customers, thus building knowledge manage-

ment efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AN ORGANISATIONAL PERSPECTIVE OF

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management is not a new concept. Be-

yond its role in ancient world history, it came into

mainstream relevance with the invention of Johann

Gutenberg’s printing technology in about 1455.

With the increase in printed books and manuscripts

came the development of libraries, which became

the critical source of knowledge for many people

for the first time. In the 17th century, there was a

rapid expansion of learning and knowledge through

newly formed societies, which had the charter of

disseminating new thinking and knowledge through

journals (Wiegand, 1994).

The next major change impacting on dimensions

of information and knowledge capture, storage

and distribution was the introduction of computers.

Digital words were captured and shared between

computers across wide geographical distances. This

trend has gathered momentum with the spread of

the Internet and developments in the social media.

The opportunities for innovation and diffusion of

knowledge use gather momentum as information

technology advances.

In the 1990s, senior managers began to talk about

knowledge management as they began to realise

that the foundations of modern economies had

shifted from natural resources to intellectual assets.

Networked computers provided the capability to

address how knowledge may be codified, stored

and shared, practically and economically (Hansen

et al., 1999). One estimate from this period suggested

that three-quarters of the Fortune 100’stotalmarket

capitalisation was represented by intangible assets

such as patents, copyrights and trademarks. The re-

sponsibility of managing these important company

assets must be the concern of senior managers as

well as the corporate legal staff (Reitzig, 2004).

Hence, there is renewed focus on effective knowl-

edge management in organisations.

To some, knowledge management is seen to be a

logical extension to three basic business trends

(Guptill, 2005):

(a) increasing amount of digitised information data

that are available 24 × 7,

(b) globalis ation of business such that production

can occur anywhere in the world as it is knowl-

edge that is the true source of competitive ad-

vantage and

(c) growing complexity of business requires that

new business processes will deliver ‘the right in-

formation at the right time’so as to ensure ac-

countability and reduce the risk of mistakes.

When discussing organisational knowledge, it is

useful to summarise key definitions from the litera-

ture. Data are often described as the base platform in

the knowledge hierarchy and are defined as facts

and statistics either historical or derived from exper-

imentation or calculation (Gedes and Grosset, 1999).

Information is the next step in terms of value and has

*Correspondence to: Bruce Perrott, UTS Sydney, PO Box 123

Sydney 2007, Sydney, New South Wales 2007, Australia.

E-mail: bruce.perrott@uts.edu.au

Knowledge and Process Management

Volume 22 Number 4 pp 288–296 (2015)

Published online 2 December 2015 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1492

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.