AUTHOR COPY Research article Knowledge management governance: the road to continuous benefits realization Suzanne Zyngier 1 , Frada Burstein 2 1 La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia; 2 Monash University, Victoria, Australia Correspondence: S Zyngier, La Trobe University, Kingsbury Dve, Bundoora, Victoria 3086, Australia. Tel: þ 61 3 94795265; Fax: þ 61 3 479 5971; E-mail: s.zyngier@latrobe.edu.au Abstract Investment in knowledge management (KM) programmes is often contentious due to the challenge of meeting the need for continuous and sustainable benefits realization. In KM, the word ‘sustainable’ describes how programmes of strategies to leverage organizational knowledge remain productive over time: that they deliver strategic value to the organization. The focus of this paper falls on the constructs of the governance of KM and on its leadership, in KM strategy development and implementation, including risk management, financial controls and transparent evaluation mechanisms for continuous benefits realization. This paper presents a KM governance model and explores its recent validation through six case studies of large, distributed, multinational organizations, and through these introduces the granular constructs of KM governance. Exploration of the impact of KM governance on developing and implementing KM programmes in each case study organization demonstrates that there is a clear nexus between strategic KM governance and benefits realized from those programmes. Journal of Information Technology (2012) 27, 140–155. doi:10.1057/jit.2011.31; published online 22 November 2011 Keywords: knowledge management; knowledge management governance; governance; strategic knowledge management; benefits realization Introduction I n information-based economies, knowledge is a key organizational resource and competitive differentiator (Grant, 1996; Teece et al., 1997). Thus the management of organizational knowledge is an imperative for forward- looking strategic leadership. Following Alavi and Leidner (2001) and Alavi et al. (2006), we define KM as the basic processes of creation, storage/retrieval, transferring/sharing, and applying knowl- edge to fulfill organizational aims and objectives. Benefits gained through such strategies are diverse and can include: improved decision making, support for knowledge retrie- val, improved communication between staff, improved information about and for customers; benefits in workflow, quality and productivity; improvements in innovation and business opportunities; expansion in organizational and personal knowledge bases and finally financial outcomes in volume of sales, profit margin, competitive advantage and improvements in cash flow (Seeley and Dietrich, 2000; Davenport, 2005; Alavi et al., 2006). However, many KM programme implementations are troubled by obstacles to ongoing benefits realization (DeLong and Fahey, 2000; Chua and Lam, 2005; Kulkarni et al., 2006). Taking a knowledge-based view of organizations (Grant, 1996; Teece, 1998; Eisenhardt and Santos, 2002; Reus et al., 2009), it follows that the capacity to effectively utilize the relevant knowledge of employees to achieve organizational aims and objectives depends on deliberate ongoing investment in leveraging organizational knowledge. While funding such initiatives may continue, their value is frequently questioned as they fail to realize the expected benefits – the return on investment (ROI) from KM sought by organizations (Swart and Kinnie, 2003; Desouza and Raider, 2006; Agrawal and Zyngier, 2009). Organizations will only continue to invest in programmes to manage organizational knowledge where certain long-term strategic ROI is delivered (Murphy and Simon, 2002; Kelleher and Courtney, 2003; O’Dell and Leavitt, 2004; Desouza and Raider, 2006; Braganza et al., 2007). Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In KM, the word describes how systems, tools and techniques to leverage organizational knowledge remain productive over time: Journal of Information Technology (2012) 27, 140–155 & 2012 JIT Palgrave Macmillan All rights reserved 0268-3962/12 palgrave-journals.com/jit/