WHY REINVENT THE WHEEL AGAIN? Investigating Challenges to Develop and Maintain Structural Capital in a Knowledge Intensive Network-Based Organisation

Abstract

In a fast changing knowledge-intensive business environment, the importance of harnessing knowledge from employees has intensified. Thus, a key success factor for organisations stresses the ability to institutionalise knowledge from employees into structural capital. The phenomenon of structural capital can be generally described as the knowledge and structure an organisation has when all the employees go home at the end of the day. Hence, structural capital is related to content that can be stored and reused, further allowing employees not to constantly “reinvent the wheel again”. However, structural capital is something that has to be developed and maintained to value an organisation. Since there are different types of organisational structures, there are also different ways to achieve goals. This research has aimed to identify the challenges to develop and maintain structural capital in knowledge intensive network-based organisations, and has done so by adopting a single case study design to investigate the Swedish management consultant firm Centigo. The concluded challenges highlight problems with the network-based organisation in itself, a lack of processes to manage structural capital, and also complications connected to incentives.