Knowledge management strategy and organization: a perspective of analysis

Abstract Several approaches, processes and organizational forms to develop and properly manage knowledge in a company have been proposed in the literature. However, there is a lack of methodologies aimed at supporting the analysis and implementation of a knowledge management (KM) strategy, the organizational approach to manage and leverage the company's knowledge. In this paper, two main and opposite KM strategies are pointed out: the knowledge market and the knowledge community . A model is then proposed to assess the current KM strategy adopted by a company and its distance from the two extreme KM strategies. The model can support companies in the identification of suitable actions to better implement their KM strategy and to foster KM practices in the organization. The effectiveness of the model is also tested on a real case of application. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.