IMPROVING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (USING CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS)

Knowledge has become one of the critical driving factors for business success. Organizations arebecoming more knowledge intensive, they are hiring minds more than hands, and the needs forleveraging the value of knowledge are increasing. As a result, knowledge has been treatedsystematically much like other tangible resources and many organizations are exploring the field ofknowledge management in order to improve and sustain their competitiveness. In Iran lots ofknowledge management projects have been failed so the need for a more systematic and deliberatestudy on the critical success factors (CSFs) for implementing knowledge management is crucial.Organizations need to be cognizant and aware of the factors that will influence the success of aknowledge management initiative. Ignorance and oversight of the necessary important factors willlikely hinder an organization’s effort to realize its full benefit. This paper compares and reviews theexisting CSFs proposed by various authors in the literature. By combining these factors a set of CSFsfor knowledge management implementation in an Iranian consultant company is proposed. Each of theproposed CSFs is discussed and the results of an empirical assessment employed to evaluate them arethen reported in order to identify each factor's situation in a company and which one has to beimproved first.

کلیدواژه ها:

Knowledge management system (KMS) ، Critical success factors ، CSFs ، Knowledge management