• Your Knowledge Experts
  

Your Experts for Knowledge Management, Innovation Management, and Social Network Analysis

Informal communication of knowledge is a critical factor for the success and failure of organizations. The importance of knowledge in organizational environments is widely subject to research, strategies, solutions and discussions. After the hype about knowledge management (KM), the discussions have slowed down during the last years. Not only did the question arise, whether knowledge can be actually managed, but doubt has been cast on simplistic approaches, technical solutions and the contribution of knowledge management to the return on investment. This slow down provides the opportunity to take a closer look at the role and processes of knowledge in organizations, to undertake a more detailed analysis, and to offer more complex and (hopefully) more suitable approaches to deal with them.

We put our focus on the processes of knowledge generation through knowledge communication within and between organizations. The pragmatic approach of networks is outlined as a powerful concept to grasp the social relationships between individuals as well as between social aggregates for conceptual and analytical purposes.

Social network analysis (SNA) has become more widely recognized as a potential method to analyze, evaluate and influence knowledge generation processes. We provide guidelines to undertake an evaluation of the informal communication structures within a specific domain of knowledge through application of tools and methods of social network analysis.

Our action model goes beyond the boundaries of a passive descriptive-analytical academic method toward an intervening active framework to shape the relationships of knowledge communication in organizations.

More about our perspectives on:

• Knowledge Management
  

• Knowledge Communities
  

• Innovation Networks
  

• Social Network Analysis
  

• Book: Leveraging Knowledge
  

• Further Publications

• About the Author