Organisational energy and other meta-learning: case studies of knowledge management implementation in nine Asian countries

Abstract

The paper makes two cross-case comparisons: (a) learning and knowledge sharing processes across 22 cases of KM practice, mostly from the corporate and public sectors in 9 Asian countries; and (b) initiation, implementation and initial outcomes of 21 cases of KM in the development sector in the Philippines. The aim is to glean what worked in KM and how it was made to work, so that lessons may be applied to KM in the development sector. Several cross-case observations were made. A salient observation that emerges across all cases is the importance of managing motivational factors for success of the KM initiatives. The paper proposes a new construct, organisational energy, to describe the broad span of motivational and similar factors found to be essential for success of KM in the private, public and development sectors.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge with thanks the comments of Ivan Kulis, Ewen Le Borgne and Sarah Cummings on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. Roper and Pettit (2006) reviewed the distinctions between the two terms ‘learning organisation’ and ‘organisational learning’.

2. Below are definitions by leading knowledge management practitioners: ‘Justified belief that increases an entity's capacity for effective action’ (Nanoka 1994). ‘I define knowledge as a capacity to act’ (Sveiby 1997). ‘Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody – either by becoming grounds for action, or by making an individual (or an institution) capable of different or more effective action’ (Drucker 1989). ‘Knowledge is information in action’ (O'Dell and Jackson Grayson Jr 1998).

3. The leading proponents of this school of KM include the earliest KM practitioners from Scandinavian countries such as Karl Erik Sveiby and Leif Edvinsson, and later proponents such as Thomas Stewart and Patrick Sullivan. Human capital and structural capital roughly correspond to tacit and explicit knowledge, respectively. The best known widely-accepted international KM award, the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise or MAKE Award, adopts eight criteria based on the intellectual capital framework.

4. Gender gaps in Philippine society rank sixth smallest in the world and are smallest compared to other Asian countries. The Philippines ranked sixth in the world and first in Asia in the Global Gender Gap Index, see Hausmann et al. (2008).