Management

6th International Scientific Conference May 13–14, 2010, Vilnius, Lithuania BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT 2010 Selected papers. Vilnius, 2010

ISSN 2029-4441 print / ISSN 2029-428X CD doi:10.3846/bm.2010.078 http://www.vgtu.lt/en/editions/proceedings © Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 2010

QUANTITATIVE MODEL OF ORGANIZATION’S KNOWLEDGE POTENTIAL ASSESSMENT Juozas Bivainis1, Renatas Morkvnas2
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Sauletekio ave. 11, LT-10223 Vilnius, Lithuania E-mail: 1vvsevk@vgtu.lt; 2 renatas.morkvenas@vgtu.lt Abstract. Although plenty of scientists have researched the theoretical and practical problems of assessing organization’s knowledge potential for a few decades, a unified and single methodology of assessment has not been accepted. The outcome of ourresearch is the original concept for determining knowledge potential, essentially based on new principles. An assessment of the factors making a real impact helped in building a model including such components as employee’s knowledge potential, knowledge potential synergy, and organization’s external medium. The quantitative specifications of the above introduced components have been prepared.Practical application of the model has been researched by an experiment. Keywords: organization, employees, knowledge potential, quantitative assessment, model.

1. Introduction All human activities are based on the application of individualized and group knowledge. Both organizations and governments make huge investments into creating intellectual power platforms. As a result of these processes,society has stepped into a new stage of its development, characterized by the formation of knowledge networks that are complex in structure and different in level (Castell 2000). A need to conceptualize the human knowledge potential has arisen in such a society. In the 20th century, this potential has been acknowledged to be the most important resource determining the success of people andorganizations, the effectiveness of investment, the development of economy and even the power of states. Media as well as research abundantly employ the concepts of knowledge society, knowledge economy and the like, inviting to allocate more resources for the development of knowledge economy and knowledge itself. Knowledge is taken as a criterion in comparing and prioritizing employees, organizations, andstates. It is self-explanatory that in order to develop something in a certain direction and assertiveness, it is first necessary to be able to measure, evaluate or calculate that something. However, professional as well as scientific literature is very limited in analyzing this aspect of the object of knowledge. On the other hand, quite a few scientific papers and other larger publications explorevarious aspects of knowledge management. This gap in the area of knowledge management, as seen against the present day challenges, has encouraged the authors to conduct research
586

which aims to summarize the results of the work of other authors and prepare a model for knowledge potential assessment on the organizational level. 2. Suggested model for organization’s knowledge potentialassessment The expansion of humanity is oriented to the systems based on knowledge and the latest technologies. Some published works assessed knowledge of organizations and employees and researched the use of knowledge potential by the organization. However, the exact quantitative adaptation of models for assessment of organization’s knowledge potential has not been developed. According to Drucker (1969),Bell (1973), Toffler (1980), Bivainis (1991), Nonaka, Takeuchi (1995), Kim (1999) and Armstrong, Foley (2003) the need for such investigations is caused by changing social structure. The only way of keeping the balance of growing variety and leveling the differences between organization’s interests is a constant accumulation of knowledge potential. Therefore, the need for having a method of...