KNOWLEDGE AND COMPETENCE MANAGEMENT IN PROJECT BASED ORGANIZATIONS- AN INTERNAL MARKET-BASED MODEL

Recently, project-based organizations (PBOs) received increasing attention as emerging organizational forms, in which projects tend to become the primary business mechanism for coordinating all the main business functions of the firm. The literature widely recognizes that these organizational structures face peculiar knowledge and competence management and organizational learning issues as well as the risk of internal strategic misalignment. This thesis addresses these issues by adopting a market-based approach to exchange knowledge and competencies within the boundary of the firm. This kind of approach looks promising as it addresses specific ineffectiveness of the PBOs mainly connected to the presence of the project dimension within the organization, where knowledge and competencies risk to be stuck, against the interest of the organization as a whole. A market-based approach promises to address, among the others, the motivational issue, which is one of the main brakes on the development of effective knowledge and competence management systems, by providing the users with a transparent mechanism based on the law of supply and demand. This approach has received certain attention from the literature over time, but it is generally under-researched in the project management and knowledge management literature, as well. This thesis aims to investigate this kind of approach in the context of large PBOs. First, a systematic literature review on knowledge and competence management in project-based organizations was developed. Second, based on the background of this study, I conducted some case studies in large PBOs in order to highlight the main knowledge and competence management issues currently faced by project-based organizations. Third, on the basis of the needs and requirements in terms of internal knowledge and competence management emerged from the interviews, I developed the conceptual framework of a market-based internal knowledge and competence management system and, fourth, I submitted it to the respondents of the first round of interviews in order to collect feedback. The feedback was negative. Confronting managers and employees with a market-based approach to exchange knowledge and competencies internally has brought to light aspects of the organizational culture that are deeply averse to this idea. The cases shedding light on several critical aspects of model applicability mainly due to technical, organizational, managerial and cultural issues. Fifth, an agent-based model of a knowledge market was designed and developed and the preliminary results of working simulations with different initial settings of selected parameters are presented in the thesis. The model is very general in nature and could be applied to describe both an internal corporate market and knowledge trading dynamics among firms in a knowledge ecosystem. This approach represents an innovative way to address the management of knowledge and opens the way for many future developments. The thesis is organized in five main parts: a systematic literature review on knowledge and competence management in PBOs, case studies and development of the knowledge market model, design and implementation of an agent-based model of a knowledge market and finally the analysis of data returned by the simulator

Internal markets for knowledge-intensive human resources: a new frontier in personalization strategy for knowledge management

Purpose \u2013 This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework of an integrated knowledge management system, in which several knowledge management strategies are nested. Specifically, the paper focuses on possible strategies to localise and transfer different types of knowledge resources in project-based organisations, including expertise embedded in talented people, in order to pursue new emerging business opportunities and improve the whole organisation\u2019s effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach \u2013 This paper is theoretical in nature. Drawing on the literature on the management of tacit knowledge in project-based organisations and on internal knowledge markets we introduce the conceptual framework for an internal knowledge market which may suit the context of project-based organisations. We also briefly discuss some organisational and managerial issues potentially connected to internal knowledge market development. Originality/value \u2013 The originality of the paper lies in assuming different motivational drivers, currencies and market structures for the different kinds of knowledge goods that can be exchanged in a complex organisational structure, such as a large project-based organisation. By focussing on the internal trade of knowledge-intensive human resources, i.e. a strategic knowledge good for project-based organisations, we aim to address a specific gap in the management literature. In fact, the literature, while recognising that managing knowledge-intensive resources is a critical issue in project-based organisations, largely neglects the market-based approach to deal with it. Practical implications \u2013 Although this paper is theoretical in nature, it provides some guidelines for the development of internal markets for knowledge intensive resources, defining contexts of application, roles of the different actors, working mechanisms as well as organizational and managerial tools to mitigate possible risks and enhance benefits