Choosing knowledge management strategies by using a combined ANP and DEMATEL approach

Numerous companies are expecting their knowledge management (KM) to be performed effectively in order to leverage and transform the knowledge into competitive advantages. However, here raises a critical issue of how companies can better evaluate and select a favorable KM strategy prior to a successful KM implementation. The KM strategy selection is a kind of multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, which requires considering a large number of complex factors as multiple evaluation criteria. A robust MCDM method should consider the interactions among criteria. The analytic network process (ANP) is a relatively new MCDM method which can deal with all kinds of interactions systematically. Moreover, the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) not only can convert the relations between cause and effect of criteria into a visual structural model, but also can be used as a way to handle the inner dependences within a set of criteria. Hence, this paper proposes an effective solution based on a combined ANP and DEMATEL approach to help companies that need to evaluate and select KM strategies. Additionally, an empirical study is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.