School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2023 Dec 20;18(12):e0295250. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0295250. eCollection 2023.
The management and exploitation of knowledge can contribute to the competitive advantage of an organisation and hence can be a driver of its value. This paper examines knowledge management practices within two engineering organisations with an emphasis on barriers to its effectiveness and the influence of current and anticipated deployment of digital technologies. Two methods were used to gather research data across both organisations by combining a series of semi-structured interviews with a quantitative social network analysis. Examination of the acquired data provided insights into the relationship between the knowledge management culture in both organisations and their adoption of digital tools. Hudson's evolutionary model of safety culture has been modified to describe the culture of knowledge management in an organisation and the acquired data used to locate the two organisations on their knowledge management journey. It is proposed that social networks could be used as an indicator of the stage of evolution of knowledge management in engineering organisations more generally with low network densities and dispersed networks representing higher stages of evolution.
知识的管理和利用可以为组织带来竞争优势，因此可以成为其价值的驱动因素。本文考察了两家工程公司的知识管理实践，重点关注其有效性的障碍以及当前和预期部署数字技术的影响。通过将一系列半结构化访谈与定量社会网络分析相结合，使用两种方法在两个组织中收集研究数据。对获得的数据的分析深入了解了两个组织的知识管理文化与其对数字工具的采用之间的关系。哈德逊的安全文化进化模型经过修改，用于描述组织的知识管理文化，所获得的数据用于确定两个组织在知识管理之旅中的位置。本文提出，可以使用社交网络作为工程组织中知识管理进化阶段的指标，网络密度低且网络分散表示更高的进化阶段。
