Abstract:
Knowledge Management (KM) and Business Intelligence (BI) are topics, which are receiving
much currency in the literature of academia and the general media over the past several years.
This thesis explores KM from the perspective of the acquisition of business intelligence inside
and outside the organisation.
We do this by undertaking an extensive survey of the literature in the field. This thesis provides
an overview of the major concepts, approaches, and issues as well as some experiences and trends
of KM, covering both organisational and technological aspects.
Firstly, chapter 2 discusses various definitions of knowledge and KM as well as related terms
like tacit knowledge and intellectual capital, from a philosophical, a technological and a business
point of view.
Secondly, chapter 3, describes the major components of KM, from a process perspective, a func-
tional perspective and a technological perspective. Important processes include the setting of
appropriate goals; the creation, discovery, acquisition and capture of knowledge. The chapter
also describes the storage of that knowledge in knowledge repositories, the classification, re-
trieval, filtering and refinement of knowledge; the transfer and use of that knowledge. Finally,
the chapter ends with how organisations may undertake the assessment, conservation and main-
tenance of knowledge, and states that groupware, document management systems, intelligent
agents, knowledge maps and expertise profiling are examples of technologies used in KM.
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The thesis then looks at the role of asynchronous groupware in enabling and harnessing the
benefits of KM. Here, the research discusses how Information Technology (IT), and specifically,
synchronous and asynchronous groupware, may be integrated with KM in a drive towards cre-
ating BI. Chapter 4 also studies the term `business intelligence', with specific relevance to the
identification of business opportunities, and the application of the concepts of intellectual capital
(IC).
Chapter 5 outlines the research methodology, which includes two surveys on KM awareness and
KM practices in order to gauge the level of implementation and application of KM for adding
value to organisations. The research methodology also employs a case study to validate the
implementation of an aspect of KM collaboration and knowledge sharing.
The findings from the surveys give testament to the level of awareness and implementation of
KM in best practice organisations. Chapter 7 then presents the approaches to measuring IC,
and BI used by firms employing knowledge management practices to maintain their competitive
advantage. In chapter 8, the researcher analyses how KM presentations and implementation in
organisations may be operationalised.
In chapter 9, the research presents the research model, the KM-BI model, which is the seminal
objective of this thesis. The KM-BI model uses the confirmatory factor analysis procedure, Proc
Calis of SAS Institute, to present a measurement model. In seeking to clarify the argument being
made, a model is confirmed and discussed in terms of the transformation process from KM to
BI and the subsequent competitive advantage.
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