An Integrated View of Knowledge Management Enablers, Components, and Benefits: Comprehensive Literature Review

Abstract

The key to success in the 21 st century, knowledge-based economy, will be the effective and efficient management of knowledge. Knowledge Management (KM) has a direct impact on organizational success. KM in a knowledge-based economy entails growth, value, and improving living standards through knowledge creation, storage, and dissemination. This study aims to integrate KM enablers, components, and benefits into a single view through a comprehensive literature search. The integrative view of these three factors would facilitate the understanding of KM initiatives within organizations. This paper performs a comprehensive literature review to explain the KM enablers, components, and benefits. From the literature review, KM enablers have been explained in different ways. However, this paper categorized them into eight (8) classes: organizational culture, organizational structure, management support, champion support, design of KM strategy, performance and evaluation, training, and technologies. Additionally, this study identified six (6) major components of KM: people, processes, technology, information/content, governance, and strategy. In this study, the KM benefits were seen to support business organizations to achieve both process outcomes and organizational outcomes.