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The Value of Knowledge Management 341

improve upon employees ’ skills. Note that KM is never to be presented as a silver
bullet that will solve all organizational woes — hence the phrase “ contributes toward. ”
Causality is extremely diffi cult to prove in a complex organizational environment, but
while desired results may not be attributed completely to KM, there should be a way
of at least partially attributing the success to KM.
Another frequent reason why KM is measured is to convince management and
stakeholders that KM is adding value to the organizational equation. This form of
justifi cation will help with the resource allocation and budgeting — costs are unfortu-
nately all too visible, whereas KM benefi ts tend to be rather opaque and long-term.
Finally, there are two general types of evaluations: formative (or in progress feedback)
and summative (which is provided upon completion). Formative KM assessment can
help revise project plans and goals and identify areas that need improvement while
there is still time to effect changes. A summative evaluation is much like a report
card — the work has been “ handed in ” and the results have been assessed.
What do we want to measure? KM assessment should focus on meaningful mea-
sures that relate directly to specifi c targets and objectives. The level of granularity
should be detailed enough that the results provide a means of acting upon them. For
example, a large organization wanted to know if the four communities of practice
they had supported and invested in had resulted in some benefi ts. They decided to
measure member satisfaction. The old adage, “ be careful what you wish ” for led to an
assessment that read: “ 97% of employees are highly or very satisfi ed with their mem-
bership in their CoP. ” There are a number of problems with this approach. For
example, we know that people are happy being members, but did we measure the
right dimension? A better question would have been: “ Could you provide specifi c
examples to illustrate how your participation in the CoP has helped you to do your
job better? ” A different organization did in fact include this question and found results
such as: “ I had no notion that a group on the other side of the country was working
on the very same sorts of problems as I was — we are now collaborating together and
have established a new thematic CoP; I was able to access up-to-date information that
I did not even know existed because of the CoP news alert I received. ”
The question, “ Who are we measuring for? ” while at times obvious, does deserve
some attention. Typically, we need to be aware of who is concerned by the success or
failure of the KM initiatives and what their expectations are. Expectations can lend
themselves to a form of gap analysis: the higher the expectations, the more diffi cult
the measurement and the greater the gap between what stakeholders would like
KM to do and what KM actually did. There are typically three main categories of
stakeholders: