Knowledge Management: The Case of Xerox

Recently, the concept of knowledge has been universally recognized as a critical source of achieving competitive advantage for organizations and as an extremely important intangible asset. In today's complex, ever-changing and competitive environment, organizations are challenged in order to successfully manage a wide range of fluctuations, to continuously innovate and deliver value to their customers. To achieve all of the above, they must be open to new ideas and develop a clear understanding of the ways in which knowledge is created, transferred and applied within organizations. Knowledge has been approached as the understanding of a subject or phenomenon, on a theoretical or practical basis. Knowledge management (KM) has been frequently used in recent years as a scientific term, while it has been applied to a range of activity sectors and disciplines. The purpose of KM is to manage, create and enhance the knowledge and intellectual assets of organizations. The effective use of KM can provide a number of benefits to organizations, such as enhancing the quality of services provided, increasing the response time developing innovations, offering above the norm customer value etc. The development of organizational knowledge must be sufficient, so that it can diffuse within the organization and applied where it is needed. Knowledge is increasingly recognized as a critical, strategic resource of organizations. In this paper, secondary data were utilized in order to adequately fulfill the set research objectives developed by the researcher, based on the critical evaluation of existing knowledge. Secondary data was used, while the case study research technique was utilized to develop valuable lessons for the organizations. The organization studied (XEROX) is a rare case of successful implementation of KM and was chosen for this reason. The research objective was to conceptually clarify the concept of KM, link it to organizational performance and provide suggestions in relation to strengthening KM and consolidating organizational processes of knowledge development and transfer.