Knowledge-in-practice: Exploring the influence of knowledge management processes on performance

As organizations, industries and societies become increasingly knowledge and information intensive, theories and methods for understanding knowledge and how to manage it become increasingly important. With this increasing trend towards information and knowledge intensity, knowledge management, a set of management activities aimed at designing and influencing processes of knowledge creation and integration, has emerged as one of the most influential organizational practices. This dissertation attempts to extend this stream of research and build on some of the emerging work in knowledge and management from a practice perspective. The main idea is an effort to develop and understand these important concepts within organizations and organizational research. Specifically, it attempts to fill an important gap in current research by examining two research questions: (1) What characteristics of knowledge-in-practice are important to effectively manage a firm's knowledge resources? (2) What is the relationship between specific widely-used knowledge management processes and performance? By investigating how organizations manage knowledge involved in work practices to improve performance, the results of this study reveal important insights for future practice and research in the domain of knowledge management.