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Knowledge management has various definitions, and in this section a review of them will be performed. Wiig (1997) defines KM as: “... the systematic, explicit and deliberate

building, renewal, and application of knowledge to maximize an enterprise‟s knowledge–

related effectiveness and returns from its knowledge assets.” Similarly, Beckman (1997) indicates that: “KM is the formalization of and access to experience, knowledge, and expertise that create new capabilities, enable superior performance, encourage innovation, and enhance customer value.” What is common in these two definitions is the methodical access to experience – knowledge in order to develop enterprise capabilities.

Besides, Alavi and Leidner (2001) adopt the definition of knowledge management as a process, with four sub-processes (see next section), that identifies and leverages the collective knowledge of the organisation in order to compete (von Krogh, 1998). Equally, Alavi and Leidner (2001) state that KM requires more than IT; it requires the creation of a means to share knowledge, information processed by individuals and adapted to be communicated. These points are complemented by the socio-technical perspective of KM that Coakes et al. (2002) have. They identify a framework for KM based on the relationships and interrelationships that people, business processes and technology have to put in place in the organisation in order to accomplish tasks and to achieve goals.

Also, Ergazakis et al. (2002) consider the previous definitions and their components, but summarize it as: “Knowledge management (KM) is the process of creating value from the intangible assets of an enterprise.” Finally, Burstein et al. (2002) present KM as: “a management technique to maximize the co-ordination and organisation of knowledge.”

These above approaches are associated with the way knowledge is considered as a process or a factor that influences the organisational performance. With that purpose, the contribution of Earl (2001) in this research is a guide to understand KM applications. In Earl‟s (2001) article there is a classification of different KM schools that use three big groups: technocratic, economic and behavioural. The first one includes codification, connectivity and capability; the second commercialization; and the third one, collaboration, contactivity and consciousness. This school classification indicates the need of both technologies and people in any organisation as a way to put KM into practice. The experiences show some organisational orientations through these schools and indicate that there is a need of a blended approach that takes into consideration KM to provide support to people and business processes.

However, there is a discussion regarding KM and technology, as well as, KM and the value in the business processes. The following remark in Muller-Merbach‟s (2008) article helps to decide how to see technology in KM in this research: “IT support for knowledge management must not be understood as knowledge management itself.” Regarding the value of KM in the management process, Liebowitz, (1999) indicates that KM provides a means for the development of innovation, better execution, customer knowledge, product development and enhancement. It provides equally to the organisation the support with the implementation of best practices and the development of better competences, reducing costs of managing operations in different places or conditions and improving performance evaluation systems under a better trust work environment (Liebowitz 1999).

These KM values are related to the development of technology so as to increase what people can do with technology in order to improve productivity and potentially reduce some possible setbacks that are related to people leaving the organisations, which ensures viability and survival of the organisation and better adaptation to the socio-economical environment. However, not all of these benefits are clear in all areas of the organisation because, in some cases, the silo culture limits people interactions for problem solving in technical groups.

According to this view of IT as a KM support and not KM itself, Alavi and Leidner (2001) complement the point of going beyond technology and indicate the need of a strong research process to analyse the role of IT in KM. They add to the relationship between KM and IT the fact that knowledge transfer and effective communication depends on the knowledge bases, overlap and amalgamation among people. Thus, IT is considered by Alavi and Leidner (2001) as a tool for providing knowledge amalgamation and knowledge classification, which are bases for the KMS design and for the contextual information analysis, and indicate that the quality of the knowledge transfer channels is affected by the organisation, the method, and the informality. Additionally, some authors, such as Ferguson and Pemberton (2000), present a set of resources that knowledge management can use for implementation where the emphasis is more on the creation of a map of the means to learn about the subject of study in the different areas of the organisation.

Moreover, the people component of KM is complemented by the model of Chen and Eddington (2005) for evaluation of knowledge creation over time which shows that the organisational benefit “of consistent and frequent knowledge creation process participation increases over time as the match of skills and task complexities improve.”

These authors continue by saying that there is a differentiation between the traditional worker and the knowledge worker based on the capacity for screening information or searching for knowledge inside and outside the organisations in order to create knowledge and to support business processes. Work differentiation that is associated with the knowledge creation processes, is divided into formal and structured. People create knowledge in organised and structured meetings that include training programs and time frameworks. These concepts are relevant given the previous notes about the understanding of financial institutions as knowledge organisations creating knowledge every time that a new risk is identified (Shaw 2005).

Additionally, McKeen et al. (2006) state that KM can contribute to organisational performance under different levels of measures of performance, associated with customers, products, and operations. These authors indicate the importance of KM to innovate and to achieve goals of supporting and providing better solutions to the stakeholders. The business processes require the use of the best practices and experiences to learn for future development of the organisation.

In summary, in this research, knowledge is understood as a process of applying expertise and understanding knowledge flows (Alavi and Leidner, 2001) and knowledge management, as the group of processes that coordinate and develop knowledge to create value in the organisation. In essence, with the previous bases the KM processes are presented in the following section: