An investigation of factors that influence the management of knowledge in organizations

Modern organizations are increasingly seen as knowledge-based enterprises in which proactive knowledge management is important for competitiveness. This paper introduces a descriptive framework for understanding factors that influence the success of knowledge management (KM) initiatives in an organization. It identifies three main classes of influencing factors (managerial, resource, and environmental) and characterizes the individual factors in each class. A Delphi process was used to develop and assess the framework. The Delphi panel was comprised of 31 recognized researchers and practitioners in the KM field. The resultant framework can be used by researchers for KM issue and hypothesis generation, by practitioners for benchmarking KM practices, and by educators for helping organize the study of KM. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.