Knowledge Management is here to stay. This book is a compilation of a number of important papers on this subject selected by two leaders in this field of study. A wide range of topic have been chosen which leads the reader through some of the most important considerations in the field today. The book argues that this thing called Knowledge Management has been around for at least 25 years. Yet despite being accused, at several times in that period, of being nothing more than a passing management fad or fashion, it has retained or rather sustained interest by both academics and practitioners. Publication levels in a variety of related journals remains high and organisations continue to implement strategies, processes and systems to create and share knowledge assets of importance to their business. One reason for this situation is the reality that Knowledge Management is, to a large degree, an amalgam of a number of different academic areas. A variety of academic disciplines (strategy, sociology, psychology, IT, library sciences and accounting, to mention only a few) have all made contributions. Practitioners recognize the key terms and have a loose understanding of the general subject matter, however formal education in the field is still limited and focused in a few areas. Indeed only a few KM departments exist across the world and most KM education seems to occur in the library science and IT faculties, and not in the business studies departments, where it truly belongs. This book is an important text for academics, researchers, students and practitioners.

Knowledge management can be a powerful tool if successfully implemented into an organizational structure. Uncovering the latest methods, tools, trends, and strategies in organizational knowledge management should be a priority for individuals working in a variety of industries. Knowledge Management Practice in Organizations: The View from Inside brings together industry experts to discuss the realities of knowledge management work in organizations. Examining the challenges associated with operational knowledge management, this work provides insight into the day-to-day practice of knowledge management in real-life settings. Organizational leaders and professionals, librarians, students, and researchers will find this publication to be an essential tool in understanding knowledge management implementation.

Knowledge management (KM) has become an important business strategy in an era of accelerated globalization, digitalization, and servitization of products and services. Maximizing the use of organizational resources becomes fundamental for continuous growth and prosperity. Organizations of various kinds such as resource-based organizations, product-based organizations, as well as knowledge-intensive service-oriented organizations require specific policies and support services to improve the knowledge management in their respective organizations. Knowledge Management Strategies and Applications focuses on the way organizations can create knowledge, share existing or new knowledge, and disseminate them among the stakeholders, most importantly among the employees, managers, customers, and suppliers. The selected topics are drawn from several fields of studies and give a multidisciplinary outlook. The book will be interesting not only for the researchers and students but also for the managers who want to improve knowledge sharing and innovation capabilities in their organizations.

This edited book provides a conceptual framework of managing flexibility in the areas of people, process, technology and business supported by researches/case applications in various types of flexibilities in business. The book is organized into following five parts: (i) Managing Flexibility; (ii) People Flexibility; (iii) Process Flexibility; (iv) Flexibility in Technology and Innovation Management; and (v) Business Flexibility. Managing flexibility at the level of people, process, technology and business encompasses the requirements of both choice and speed. The need for managing flexibility is growing to cope with the developments and challenges in the global business environment. This can be seen from reactive as well as proactive perspectives. Flexibility is a major dimension of business excellence and deals with a paradoxical view point such as stability and dynamism, continuity and change, centralization and decentralization, and so on. It needs to be managed at the levels of people, process, technology and various business functions and it is important to create flexibility at the level of people to create and manage flexibility in processes and technologies in order to support flexible business requirements.

This book contains the papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Pr- tical Aspects of Knowledge Management organized by the Department of Knowledge Management, Institute of Computer Science and Business Informatics, University of Vienna. The event took place on December 02–03, 2004 in Vienna. The PAKM conference series offers a communication forum and meeting ground for practitioners and researchers engaged in developing and deploying advanced bu- ness solutions for the management of knowledge and intellectual capital. Contributions pursuing integrated approaches which consider organizational, technological and c- tural issues of knowledge management have been elected for presentation. PAKM is a forum for people to share their views, to exchange ideas, to develop new insights, and to envision completely new kinds of solutions for knowledge management problems. The accepted papers are of high quality and are not too specialized so that the main issues can be understood by someone outside the respective ?eld. This is crucial for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. Like its predecessors, PAKM 2004 featured two invited talks. It is a real joy seeing the visibility of the conferenceincrease and noting that kno- edge management researchers and practitioners from all over the world submitted - pers. This year, 163 papers and case studies were submitted, from which 48 were - cepted.