Exploring the relationship between knowledge management and organizational learning via fuzzy cognitive mapping

Abstract

The normative literature within the field of Knowledge Management has tended to concentrate on techniques and methodologies for codifying knowledge. Similarly, the literature on organizational learning, focuses on aspects of those knowledge that are pertinent at the macro-organizational level (i.e. the overall business). There remains little published literature on how knowledge management and organizational learning are interrelated within business scenarios. In addressing this relative void, the authors of this paper present a model that highlights the factors for such an inter-relationship, which are extrapolated from a manufacturing organisation using a qualitative case study research strategy, supplanted by a cognitive mapping technique: Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM). The paper looks at the Information Systems Evaluation (ISE) process within a manufacturing organisation, the authors subsequently presenting a model that not only defines a relationship between KM and OL, but highlights factors that could lead a firm to develop itself towards a learning organisation.