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One-Size-Fits-All? Towards a Taxonomy of Knowledge Workers

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
The 8th International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organizations

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Complexity ((SPCOM))

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Abstract

Instead of focusing on one-size-fits-all policies for knowledge management (KM), this research attempts to establish a taxonomy of workers based on their KM readiness expressed through their attitudes and participation in KM activities. A questionnaire survey conducted with Japanese engineers reveals four distinct groups—advocates, skeptics, busy, and hopeful—derived from their perceived importance of and time spent on KM actions, with significantly differentiated perceived enablers and barriers of KM. The data, containing answers to both open-ended and ordinal scale questions, was analyzed with both text-mining and statistical analyses. Broadly, KM advocates and busy people recognize the importance of intention and autonomy while skeptics give very little credit to any established KM enabler. Advocates, busy people and skeptics recognize information and people as important barriers to knowledge acquisition, storage and system as impediments to knowledge storage, understanding as an obstacle to knowledge diffusion, and application as a hurdle for knowledge application. Advocates, representing the most actively-involved faction in KM, consistently acknowledge intention and autonomy as enablers, while they cite people as barriers of KM. The results of this study suggest that to improve KM, organizations should first segment their workers based on their attitudes and participation in KM activities, and then implement different strategies aimed at different subgroups of employees based on their level of preparation or readiness for KM.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tsukuba, Tokyo, Japan

    Rémy Magnier Watanabe & Caroline Benton

Authors
  1. Rémy Magnier Watanabe
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  2. Caroline Benton
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rémy Magnier Watanabe .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Staffordshire University, Stafford, United Kingdom

    Lorna Uden

  2. College of Management, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Taiwan

    Leon S.L. Wang

  3. and Control Faculty of Science, Universidad Salamanca Department of Computing Science, Salamanca, Spain

    Juan Manuel Corchado Rodríguez

  4. National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Hsin-Chang Yang

  5. Department of Information Management, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Taiwan

    I-Hsien Ting

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Watanabe, R.M., Benton, C. (2014). One-Size-Fits-All? Towards a Taxonomy of Knowledge Workers. In: Uden, L., Wang, L., Corchado Rodríguez, J., Yang, HC., Ting, IH. (eds) The 8th International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organizations. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7287-8_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7287-8_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7286-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7287-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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