Approaches to the measurement of the impact of knowledge management programmes

Abstract

There is currently widespread interest in knowledge management, with organisations of all kinds investing in technologies, systems and people to this end. Concurrently, within business and the economy as a whole, intellectual capital or intangible assets are growing in significance in relation to traditional tangible assets such as buildings and equipment. Many organisations are finding that traditional measures of organisational performance are insufficient for the task of managing intangibles. In trying to measure the value of knowledge inputs and outputs, such metrics as return on investment or the practice of consigning intangibles to the accounting category of goodwill need to be supplemented by alternative approaches. This paper looks at the problem of knowledge measurement and, in reviewing some of the current alternatives, argues for the importance of metrics to the overall process of knowledge management. The significance of knowledge measurement to the information science community is emphasised.