A Strategic Knowledge Management Model for the Financial Services Industry

The management of knowledge is still marked by a general plurality of perspectives, leading to a multitude of different definitions of knowledge as well as different proposals for models and frameworks, all of which are intertwined with and influenced by a vast collection of academic disciplines. Thus, leaving the isolated usage of single knowledge management methods such as best practices or lessons learned aside, it is almost impossible for practitioners to easily take any existing scientific knowledge management model, transform it in accordance with the single firm?s conditions and then align it with its overall strategic management. This overall state of knowledge management within the literature, as well as the rather confused state amongst practitioners, highly influenced this study. Additionally, given the sometimes fundamental differences between certain industries as well as cultures, it is doubtful that a knowledge management model that claims to be designed for practice can account for all idiosyncrasies in all industries while at the same time spanning cultural differences. Consequently, the research question has to be narrowed down to a single industry (in the case of this study, the financial services sector) as well as a certain region (in the case of this study, German-speaking countries) and is formulated as follows: How can a financial services industry-specific knowledge management model be developed for German-speaking firms and aligned with the overall strategic management that accounts for ever-present market and/or regulatory – and hence strategic – changes? Accordingly, this study develops a strategic knowledge management model to fit into the rather turbulent and definitely unstable financial services industry, including necessary organisational adoptions. The model is based both on solid theoretical and practical grounds – academically, it draws from well recognised scholars in the fields of strategic management (including resource-based and knowledge-based views), knowledge management (including organisational learning) and academic literature on communities. In addition to theory, it draws from the empirical findings made by a triangulation of qualitative methods including (i) qualitative questionnaires answered by ten firms including, in some cases, up to three iterations, semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with nine firms and participatory observation at one site. The empirical part of this study reveals that scientific-oriented definitions of knowledge and scientific-oriented knowledge management models are not applied within German-speaking financial services companies. In addition, there is barely a recognisable link between knowledge management and strategic management. On the other hand, it shows that practitioners apply knowledge management methods much more often than they realise, which is especially true when using various forms of communities to support reaching a firm?s targets. In essence, the result of this study allows financial services firms to make use of a highly flexible and thus sustainable knowledge management model accounting for various idiosyncrasies found within the industry for each respective single firm. In addition, the model tightly and seamlessly links overall knowledge management efforts with strategic management.