23 rd Australasian Conference on Information Systems How Organisations Know What They Know 3-5 Dec 2012, Geelong Newk-Fon Hey Tow et al. 1 How Organisations Know What They Know: A Survey of Knowledge Identification Methods among Australian Organisations William Newk-Fon Hey Tow John Venable Peter Dell School of Information Systems Curtin University Perth, Wester Australia W.Newk-FonHeyTow@postgrad.curtin.edu.au, J.Venable@curtin.edu.au, P.T.Dell@curtin.edu.au Abstract Literature surrounding the Knowledge Management process of identifying what knowledge exists within an organisation is scarce. This research project set out to fill the research gaps surrounding that particular Knowledge Management process called Knowledge Identification. This paper reports on the findings of a survey sent to 973 Australian organisations to investigate their Knowledge Identification practices. The survey findings show that while organisations do perceive Knowledge Identification to be important, the practice of KI has not reached mainstream adoption yet. The reasons why and why not, and the range of methods organisations currently use to establish what knowledge exists within their four walls are identified. The survey findings also reveal two opposing approaches organisations take in practising KI: proactive KI and reactive KI. Keywords Knowledge Management, Knowledge Identification, Organisational Science. INTRODUCTION An increasing number of empirical studies have demonstrated the positive impact Knowledge Management has on organisational performance (Holsapple and Wu 2011). Yet, effective Knowledge Management still faces “formidable obstacles” (Burrows et al. 2005, p. 73). One key obstacle is that organisations often do not know what they know. In other words, they are often unaware of the knowledge that exists within their organisation already (Alavi and Leidner 2001; Davenport and Prusak 2000; Hinds and Pfeffer 2002; Nevo et al. 2009). Employees (knowledge-holders) possessing particular skills and knowledge could be invaluable to both colleagues and managers within the same organisation, but it is more likely than not that those people who could make use of this knowledge do not even know these knowledge-holders and their knowledge exist (Nevo et al. 2012). “Talk about a waste!” (Nevo et al. 2009). The above is one example among many of the ramifications of organisations not knowing what they already know. Surprisingly though, literature surrounding either the practice or the theory of how organisations establish what knowledge exists within their four walls - the Knowledge Management process known as Knowledge Identification - is limited. This paper addresses this knowledge gap and reports on the findings of a survey sent to 973 Australian organisations to investigate how they identify what knowledge exists within their organisation. The following sections elaborate further on the background to the research, outline the research questions and methodology, and present and discuss the findings of the survey. BACKGROUND Explanations for the above Knowledge Management obstacle vary; the most common explanation is the elusive notion of knowledge sharing. To identify who knows what, employers have encouraged their employees to share experience and expertise in knowledge repositories that other employees can tap. Employees however do not find it “natural” to write down what they know (Riege 2005; Thurm 2006), and some knowledge are simply difficult to articulate due to their tacitness (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Polanyi 1966). Another explanation for why organisations do not know what they know is that contemporary Knowledge Management frameworks are not applied effectively and key Knowledge Management processes are overlooked. According to Hylton (2002, p. 2), the underlying cause of many mistakes of early Knowledge Management initiatives is that organisations skip the very first step by not determining whether they know what