Grounded Theory Approach in Knowledge Management

Abstract

Knowledge management (KM), as a new field having many concepts and strong conceptualization, is a vital business process in organizations that, because of the nature of knowledge, is closely linked to individuals. Because sociological research is mainly qualitative and KM contains sociological components, KM can take advantage of methods such as grounded theory (GT) approach that are specific to qualitative research. Accordingly, the chapter provides an understanding of the use of GT in KM. For this purpose, the chapter focuses on understanding process of transforming knowledge into wisdom, presenting KM model, determining factors of knowledge sharing, and consequently, developing a framework of knowledge sharing and determining the critical success factors (CSFs) of KM and their relationships within a model.