Lessons learned from knowledge management failure factors

Abstract

The importance of managing organizational knowledge for sustainable competitive advantage has gained much recognition in management and knowledge management literature and these have made contemporary organisations to be aware that the most important asset of every organization is its organizational knowledge which is embedded in its people. Therefore, the judicious management of it will create core competencies, greater performance and advantage for the organization over its competitors in the business environment. But is knowledge management all about success stories? In fact, there are evidences that a great number of knowledge management projects end up unsuccessful. Knowledge management scholars are mostly interested in the success stories of KM implementation and processes but in practice, KM fails to sometimes justify the return on investment. While many KM scholars agree that organizational learning is an essential part of knowledge management, it is therefore important to emphasize that critical organization learning comes from lessons learned from failures. In the process of Knowledge Management, these lessons learned from failures help an organization to create its knowledge and avoid reinventing the wheel. Therefore, learning from previous KM failures is important for any organization that strives to manage its knowledge. This paper is aimed to explain some of the key points of the lessons learned from KM failures. The paper explains why KM failures factors should be examined with keen interest of helping KM practitioners to learn from KM failures and avoid reinventing the wheel. The review of relevant literature, reports and articles have been studied with the purpose of understanding the reasons for KM failures and the failure factors. No doubt, this paper contributes immensely to existing body of knowledge on KM failures and will help KM managers and practitioners to avoid making the same mistake while implementing KM in their organization