Towards Sustainable Knowledge Management: The Emergence of Non-Pre-Competitive Knowledge Ecosystems in a Regulated Safety Context

This study presents a qualitative case study exploring how inter-organizational knowledge management is structured within a regulated safety context, where the core objective is the long-term preservation of critical knowledge. Within such a context, organizations collaborate to collectively create, share, and sustain knowledge over time. Our analysis shows that the most effective response to this challenge lies in the reconfiguration of inter-organizational architecture into a non-pre-competitive knowledge ecosystem. This type of ecosystem, still underexplored in the literature, is characterized by the absence of commercial or anticipatory competitive goals. It is structured around the production, preservation, and emergence of interconnected knowledge systems, supported by organizational innovation involving new practices, structures, and coordination mechanisms. Adopting an organizational perspective that bridges insights from knowledge management and organizational innovation, we analyze the emergence of such an ecosystem through the case of Kronos, a network of organizations operating in a highly regulated environment. The case highlights how relationship formalization, institutional regulation, and the presence of a focal actor contribute to a collective goal of knowledge transmission, sustainability, and systematization. This paper offers a conceptualization of non-pre-competitive knowledge ecosystems, emphasizing their distinctiveness from traditional pre-competitive frameworks and underlining the structuring role of organizational innovation in sustainable knowledge management.