This book is intended to be a practical guide to illustrate how the latest knowledge management (KM) research can be applied by organisations. Among the proliferating shelves of KM textbooks, practical guides are still relatively rare and are therefore looked for with some anticipation by readers.
Unfortunately, the book gets off to a disappointing start. The web page mentioned in the preface as offering updated research and how to use it in practice does not actually exist. The suggested home page given for Hitotsubashi University, where the authors work and which is included in the error message, does have current information about KM (e.g. items from one month ago and events due to take place next month), making it difficult to understand why the specific link to accompany the book does not work.
The book's first chapter explains some of the theories behind KM, which is probably necessary scene-setting, but some readers attracted to the claim that it is a practical book may find this a little off-putting. Subsequent chapters, though, do offer some practical ideas for overcoming common problems - for example, a lack of context may deter users of internal databases, but it is suggested that this can be overcome by adapting Amazon-type search facilities and links to similar items of interest on intranets, with facilities to narrow searches by document type or previous user ratings. However, sometimes problems are identified without offering a solution. For example, the problem of expecting knowledge workers to contribute to knowledge repositories as well as carrying out their work, and to make time to consult knowledge repositories before making decisions, is identified as unrealistic, but no suggested incentives or means of freeing employee time to contribute to or use these repositories are provided.
The chapter by Prusak and Weiss does cover some of the incentives which have not worked and does suggest alternatives. This chapter is one of the best: it has a more practical outlook and contains useful ideas about the culture of businesses which successfully implement KM. A practical book, which this book claims to be, would generally be expected to make more suggestions or use case studies to illustrate how other organisations have overcome the aforementioned difficulties. The chapter on corporate finance has four pages of very detailed figures of ratios, and some complex equations, without enough explanation in the accompanying text to prevent general readers from being deterred from studying the chapter's concepts.
Considering the number of authors contributing chapters, the book is very readable, without jarring changes in style, and some of the brief case studies reappear throughout the text to encourage the sense of continuity. The chapter on governance information in knowledge-based companies is particularly good and shows insight into the challenges facing information intensive businesses, such as law firms. The glossary is excellent, with a paragraph devoted to each term, explaining it in detail and ending with references to which chapters use the term.
The inside of the dust jacket claims that the book's “… emphasis is on the practical applications of knowledge to a wide variety of organizations and functional areas … (and) offers updated examples of knowledge creation and management in practice …”. However, by the end of the book the sense of disappointment has been compounded, as it is not as practical a guide as the cover leads the reader to expect. It does use short pithy case studies throughout the text and offers some good ideas that many organisations could readily adopt, but practical guides generally have checklists, flowcharts and detailed case studies, which this book sadly lacks. In terms of navigating around chapters, greater use could have been made of headings between sections to locate quickly relevant sections within each chapter. Overall, it is a worthwhile read on current theories with some interesting ideas, provided the reader does not expect a practical guide or manual.
