Challenges of justification of investment in organizational knowledge management

ABSTRACT This paper aims to explore the interrelation between the difficulty in justifying to executives the resources necessary for knowledge management (KM) in itiativesand the challenges in understanding the value of optimal KM. From in-depth personal interviews and group interviews with 41KM professionals, we reveal eight significant challenges that may explain the difficulty of understanding the true value of KM for knowledge-intensive organisations. We reveal that these challenges have a significant effect on the perceptions of the profitability of budget investments in tools and practices aimed at improving knowledge flow in organisations. Given that the present study is the antithesis of previous research, we suggest that future researchers deepen the research of the positions of senior executives regarding KM. This research is unique in its attempt to close the gap in the literature created by the lack of scientific studies on the challenges at the heart of the discipline.