Clyde Holsapple: Profiles in Knowledge

Originally published September 18, 2024

7 min readSep 19, 2024

This is the 107th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. Clyde Holsapple is Endowed Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. He is a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute and a senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Clyde has written over a dozen books and over 150 journal articles across many disciplines. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Senior Editor of Information Systems Research; Area Editor of both Decision Support Systems and the INFORMS Journal on Computing; and Associate Editor of both Management Science and Decision Sciences.

Background

Education

Purdue University

Daniels School of Business — PhD, Information Systems, 1975–1977
MSc, Computer Science, 1973–1975
BS, Mathematics, 1968–1972

Experience

University of Kentucky — Rosenthal Endowed Chair in Management Information Systems, 1988–2017
Purdue University — Professor, 1985–1989
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — Associate Professor, 1978–1981

Profiles

Content

Articles

Does Knowledge Management Pay Off?

Implications for Managers

By establishing the link between KM performance and firm performance, this study serves to inform business managers that firms should do much more than merely have some form of KM practice. They should develop a clear strategy to make their KM performance superior. Previous research and real-world examples suggest that achieving such a superior performance is complex and requires time and effort.

Although there is little well-developed guidance for managers on how to achieve superior KM performance, an increasing number of studies have begun to address this issue. For example, the knowledge chain theory identifies nine classes of activity that a firm can focus on as it strives for competitiveness via increased productivity, agility, innovation, and/or reputation. Extensions to this theory find over sixty distinct types of knowledge management activity that belong to the nine basic classes.

An important step toward achieving superior KM performance is self-assessment, which requires a firm to assess its own strengths and weaknesses. To effectively measure and appraise a firm’s KM performance, managers must look broadly and deeply at its knowledge, knowledge processors, and knowledge processes.

Knowledge Management: A Threefold Framework

Description and Analysis of Existing Knowledge Management Frameworks

Toward an Elaboration of the Knowledge Chain Model

Primary Activities

Knowledge acquisition begins with identifying knowledge in the organization’s external environment and concludes with transforming it into a representation that can be employed by the organization. Sub-activities involved in knowledge acquisition include identifying appropriate knowledge from external sources, capturing the identified knowledge from the external sources, and transferring the organized knowledge to a processor that either immediately uses it or internalizes it within the organization for subsequent use.

Knowledge selection is the counterpart to knowledge acquisition. Knowledge selection refers to the activity of identifying needed knowledge within an organization’s existing knowledge resources and providing it in an appropriate representation to an activity that needs it. Sub-activities involved in knowledge selection include identifying appropriate knowledge within the organization’s existing knowledge resources, capturing the identified knowledge from internal sources, and transferring the organized knowledge to a processor that immediately uses it or internalizes it within the organization for subsequent use.

Knowledge generation refers to the activity of producing knowledge by discovering or deriving it from existing knowledge. Sub[1]activities involved in knowledge generation include monitoring the organization’s knowledge resources and the external environment by invoking selection and/or acquisition activities as needed, producing knowledge from a base of existing knowledge, and transferring the produced knowledge for externalization and/or internalization.

Knowledge assimilation (originally termed internalization) refers to the activity that involves storage and/or distribution of acquired, selected, or generated knowledge within the organization. Sub-activities involved in knowledge assimilation include assessing knowledge to be internalized, structuring knowledge to be conveyed into representations appropriate for the targeted resources, and delivering the knowledge representations to targeted knowledge resources.

Knowledge emission (originally termed externalization) is an activity that uses existing knowledge to produce organizational outputs for release into the environment. Sub-activities involved in knowledge emission include producing the output by applying, embodying, controlling, and leveraging existing knowledge to produce the output for the target, and transferring the output by packaging and delivering the projections that have been produced for targets in the environment (Joshi 1998).

Secondary Activities

Knowledge measurement is an activity that involves the assessment of knowledge resources, knowledge processors, and knowledge manipulation activities. It is a basis for evaluation of control, coordination, and leadership; for assessing and comparing the execution of KM activities; and for evaluating the impacts of an organization’s conduct of KM on bottom-line performance.

Knowledge control is concerned with ensuring that needed knowledge resources and processors (including human and/or computer based processors) are available in sufficient quantity and quality subject to constraints and required protection. Controlling the quality of knowledge is a significant issue for KM, because the value of knowledge and returns achieved from knowledge resources depend on its quality. Protection involves protection from loss, obsolescence, unauthorized exposure, unauthorized modification, and erroneous assimilation.

Knowledge coordination refers to guiding the conduct of KM in an organization. It involves managing dependencies among knowledge resources, among knowledge manipulation activities, between knowledge resources and other resources (i.e., financial, human, and material), and between knowledge resources and KM activities.

Knowledge leadership is an activity that establishes enabling conditions for a fruitful KM. It qualifies the expression of each primary activity. In short, leadership establishes enabling conditions for achieving fruitful KM through the other eight activities. The distinguishing characteristic of leadership is that of being a catalyst through such traits as inspiring, mentoring, setting examples, engendering trust and respect, instilling a cohesive and creative culture, establishing a vision, listening, learning, teaching, and knowledge sharing.