IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/jikmxx/v04y2005i03ns0219649205001171.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Knowledge Sharing in Consulting Companies: Opportunities and Limitations of Knowledge Codification

Author

Listed:
  • Snejina Michailova

    (Department of International Business, The University of Auckland Business School, Auckland, New Zealand)

  • Akshey Gupta

    (Asia Pacific & Greater China Region, Microsoft Operations Pte Ltd, Singapore)

Abstract

This paper is a study of the knowledge-sharing difficulties experienced by three departments in a knowledge-intensive firm. The case organisation is a global consulting firm that has been on the forefront of knowledge management and has won several knowledge management related international acclaims. Our analysis shows that there are strong disincentives in place for departments to share knowledge. We found that the nature of the businesses of the departments was very different and so were their knowledge requirements and their preferred ways to seek knowledge. Additionally, confidentiality agreements with clients and lack of cross-departmental interaction inhibited knowledge sharing outside departmental boundaries. Contrary to the common belief in the organisation, we found that one single IT system could not satisfy the context-specific knowledge-sharing needs of the different departments. We suggest that some very recent breakthrough technologies could be applied to facilitate cross-departmental knowledge sharing provided they are implemented at the strategic organisational level.

Suggested Citation

  • Snejina Michailova & Akshey Gupta, 2005. "Knowledge Sharing in Consulting Companies: Opportunities and Limitations of Knowledge Codification," Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 4(03), pages 201-212.
  • Handle: RePEc:wsi:jikmxx:v:04:y:2005:i:03:n:s0219649205001171
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219649205001171
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219649205001171
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219649205001171?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hughes, Gareth, 1993. "Simulation and systems analysis for rice production (SARP) : Edited by F. W. T. Penning de Vries, H. H. van Laar and M. J. Kropff. PUDOC, Waneningen, The Netherlands, 1991. 369 pp. Price: Dfl 150.00. ," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 107-108.
    2. Terrence A. Brooks, 1995. "Information retrieval: New systems and current research. Proceedings of the 15th research colloquium of the British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 46(9), pages 713-714, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:jikmxx:v:04:y:2005:i:03:n:s0219649205001171. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/jikm/jikm.shtml .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.