Conjoint communication and knowledge use/needs analysis in a financial services firm

Abstract

The act of communication in an organisation, while necessary for the transmission of knowledge, is not synonymous with it. Communicative acts may contain large or small amounts of knowledge, and, moreover, may bear knowledge that is not of importance for the organisation. We report on an extended intervention in a financial services firm, using a conjoined analysis of knowledge use/need and a communicative network analysis, the latter being targeted by (a) a categorisation of the knowledge used and required for the business operation and (b) a knowledge of the human agents using and requiring that knowledge. The joint analysis provides better-targeted KM interventions, since knowledge transfer mechanisms can be tailored to the needs of disaggregated knowledge types rather than to knowledge as a single, aggregated resource of the firm.