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Box 9.1
(continued)

synergies or redundancies among communities, they identify opportunities for cross-
community knowledge sharing, they provide the link to organizational learning and
corporate memory systems, and they assess the value of the outputs of each of the com-
munities. A KM Council is the governance body that provides overall KM policy formula-
tion and has KM responsibility at the corporate level. In addition, knowledge sharing is
one of the four key behaviors that are evaluated in performance evaluations. Usage and
application of knowledge are behaviors that are rewarded — not numbers of hits or postings
on the intranet site. This is the major contribution required from the Human Resources
department. The World Bank spent roughly 3 percent of its total administrative budget
on KM. Of this, less than 10 percent was on technology (web, telephone, e-mail, and
videoconferencing) and 2 percent was for the operating costs of the central KM unit. The
rest went to fi nancing the thematic groups and the Knowledge Support Offi ce (KSO).
Operational managers in the communities and the regions are responsible for imple-
menting KM. Measurement, accountability, and budgets reside within the regions. Two
major forms of support are required from senior managers: that CoP leaders spend approxi-
mately 25 percent of their time on KM activities and that communities are supported by
KSOs that are best described as knowledge help desks.
The World Bank has established cost-effective, global connectivity with developing
countries to facilitate collaboration between offi ces, extend operational and administrative
information to staff at any location, and reduce the cost of doing business. For example,
the Bank provides an electronic venue for dialogue and knowledge sharing among members
of the development community. The Development Gateway is an Internet portal that
supports knowledge sharing and interactions to address the digital divide and poverty.
More than thirteen thousand staff in eighty countries are now linked together with high
speed and high quality so that everyone has access to the same work tools and informa-
tion. With the knowledge management system in place, the World Bank is able to provide
not only new services but higher quality services.
A primary indication that the World Bank made effective use of its knowledge is the
organizational innovation and entrepreneurial culture that was fostered partly as a result
of knowledge management and sharing initiatives. Some of the key concerns of the World
Bank such as timeliness or speed of creation of new knowledge, access to knowledge-
sharing methods, and innovation were also the focus of the measurements undertaken.
While it may be impossible to determine the contribution of KM with complete accuracy,
as is the case with most intangibles, it is possible to talk about the contributing role of
KM. In evaluating KM, a holistic approach was used in order to take into account human
and social as well as technological critical success factors.
In 2000, the American Productivity and Quality Centre (APQC) found the World Bank
to be one of the fi ve global best practice leaders. By 2001, The World Bank ranked fourth
place in the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises Award and was been recognized again
in 2002, 2003, and 2004. The organizations in this study are recognized for their world-
class efforts to manage knowledge, leading to superior performance. Knowledge sharing
had become a way of doing business at the Bank.