Accumulation of new and existing knowledge is recognized as a critical stage and bottleneck for the construction of Knowledge Management System. So we need systematic mechanism for effectively discovering knowledge in an organization. However, very few publications have focused on formal methodology to manage knowledge acquisition from diverse knowledge sources in an organization.
This paper proposes the Organizational Knowledge Discovery Process Model(OK-DPM) as the initiative for developing knowledge management methodology. OK-DPM is a model designed to effectively discover knowledge useful to the organization. It explains the knowledge discovery process from the conceptual level to the application level. It decomposes the organizational knowledge discovery process into 3 sub-processes; Creation, Suggestion and Validation. For each sub-process, design components are identified and possible methods for supporting each one are suggested. Also, the relationship patterns between the knowledge discovery process and knowledge type are explored. Additionally, the facilitating factors that affect the active organizational knowledge acquisition are suggested.
By applying OK-DPM to 2 real cases where the knowledge management projects are ongoing, the model was validated and revised. Even though we need to investigate with more cases to refine the OK-DPM, we found that it could provide some insights in developing the effective knowledge discovery process.
