Knowledge management : Improvement of knowledge feedback routines

Learning from one’s experience is crucial for success. If a companylearns to share knowledge in an effective way their mistakes will befewer and could lead to more productive ways of working, largerprofits and increased competitiveness.The purpose of this study has been to investigate formal andinformal knowledge management within a consultant firm’s projectbusiness, as well as investigating how far the various sorts ofknowledge travel through the organisation. The purpose has also beento develop an understanding for what encourages knowledge sharing inan organisation with several national offices distributed over largegeographical areas.This abductive study has been designed as a case-study at aconsultancy firm were the authors have done qualitative research byconducting both formal and informal interviews and observations, aswell as studied the company’s governing documents. The studyattempt to show to what degree the consultants follow their formalknowledge management, like the governing documents and for whatreasons do they follow or not follow their knowledge managementroutines. Factors which seems to promote or inhibit both formal andinformal knowledge sharing for the employees, as well as factors forknowledge sharing between the different regions in Sweden have beenpicked out. By doing so, potential improvements for the organisations“local” knowledge management routines have been defined. The aimhas also been to find ways to improve organisations knowledgefeedback with focus on the knowledge sharing between differentgeographic locations.Our research findings seem to both align with and oppose previousresearch. Often knowledge sharing is not done when a project istoo similar to another project, which is the opposite to previousresearch and that the common notion of “knowledge is power” doesnot seem to be a factor that hinders the knowledge shared in thestudied organisation. It is concluded that the company needs a datalibrary to be able to easily share knowledge across the regions anddevelop both institutional and organisational factors. They also need toclean up their governing documents and operation managementsystem and make sure to have both carrots and sticks when it comesto managing both formal and informal knowledge