Abstract

Project-based organizations (PBOs) in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry have experienced increasing competition. Engineering projects are conducted by firms to deliver customized products and services to clients. Effective knowledge management (KM) in the engineering project context is important for the sustainable growth of companies. At a practical level, engineering managers recognize two types of KM strategy, namely, personalization (person-to-person) and codification (person-to-system). A continuous debate, however, exists between dominant and balanced approaches of this strategy. This exploratory study extends the existing literature by incorporating multiple predictors of KM strategy (i.e., “personalization” and “codification”), two attributes of project complexity (“uncertainty in goals” and “structural complexity”), and an environmental context of “business strategy.” For the conceptual part, a mix–contingent configurational perspective was applied to represent the causal complexity among multiple predictors and its associated outcome. An empirical study was performed by inviting PBO/ICT companies in Indonesia. Out of the total 440 firms, 87 provided useful cases, accounting for a 20% response rate. Crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis was conducted to identify multiple case configurations. This study offers new, more comprehensive insights for engineering managers of successful and less successful ICT firms when implementing knowledge strategy in a highly nuanced manner. This study also identifies multiple successful configurations of knowledge strategy, project complexity, and business strategy.

摘要

信息和通信技术 (ICT) 行业中基于项目的组织 (PBO) 经历了日益激烈的竞争。工程项目由公司进行，以向客户提供定制的产品和服务。工程项目背景下的有效知识管理 (KM) 对于公司的可持续发展非常重要。在实践层面，工程经理认识到两种类型的 KM 策略，即个性化（人对人）和编码（人对系统）。然而，在这一战略的主导和平衡方法之间存在着持续的争论。这项探索性研究通过结合知识管理策略的多个预测因子（即“个性化”和“编码”）扩展了现有文献，项目复杂性的两个属性（“目标的不确定性”和“结构的复杂性”），以及“商业战略”的环境背景。对于概念部分，应用混合-条件配置视角来表示多个预测变量及其相关结果之间的因果复杂性。通过邀请印度尼西亚的 PBO/ICT 公司进行了一项实证研究。在总共 440 家公司中，87 家提供了有用的案例，占 20% 的回复率。进行了清晰的定性比较分析以识别多个案例配置。这项研究为成功和不太成功的 ICT 公司的工程经理在以高度细致入微的方式实施知识战略时提供了新的、更全面的见解。本研究还确定了多种成功的知识策略配置，