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13 Future Challenges for KM

The gem cannot be polished without friction.
— Chinese proverb

Knowledge management objectives are ambitious and almost always involve change —
change at the level of the individual, the group, and the organization as a whole. As
a result, they are almost never easy or straightforward. A number of critical challenges
must be successfully addressed in order to obtain the maximum value for KM invest-
ments — both in terms of budget but also in terms of time and human resources. This
chapter explores some issues facing knowledge management such as political issues
regarding Internet search engines, the shift to knowledge-based assets, intellectual
property, and how to provide incentives for knowledge sharing to successfully incor-
porate KM into organizations.

Learning Objectives

1. Discuss the politics of information seeking and what this implies for successful
knowledge management applications. Be able to outline how this would impact the
design of an organizational memory management system.
2. Describe the fi ve major types of information politics models and how knowledge-
sharing activities would take place in each of them. Be able to evaluate each model
with respect to goodness of fi t with KM requirements.
3. Defi ne the paradox of value and explain how this impacts on the design of KM
solutions. Describe the ways in which this impact can be minimized.
4. Compare and contrast the different ways incentives can be provided for knowledge
sharing.