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1. Knowledge management in the public sector
Within knowledge management (KM), the public sector is an important and specific research context. According to Edge (2005, p. 45), KM “has the potential to influence greatly and improve the public sector renewal processes”. Indeed, within the public sector, KM “is a powerful enabler in the current drive for increased efficiency in all areas” (Mcadam and Reid, 2000, p. 328). However, Edge (2005, p. 45) argues that developing a KM culture within the public sector is more challenging than in the private sector. Amayah (2013, p. 456) supports this argument outlining “organizational goals in public organizations are typically more difficult to measure and more conflicting than in private organizations, and they are affected differently by political influences”. Additionally, the public sector has specific labor divisions that are a disincentive for knowledge sharing and “this situation makes knowledge delivery in the public sector more difficult than that in the private sector” (Gau, 2011, p. 2). Therefore, studying public sector KM requires a separate research agenda.
A separate research agenda is further justified because the public sector is organizationally specific, has different effectiveness concerns and has different levels of representativeness, accountability, and responsiveness. First, KM is organizationally specific. As Jones and Mahon (2012, p. 774) exemplify “in a military environment knowledge is sometimes needed in more mission-critical situations like a battlefield, where real-time decisions can have life or death consequences and where knowledge delivered late is useless”. Similarly, in the law enforcement context KM “is not a linear sequence of actions but a more complex process, which involves mental and physical aspects of the investigator” (Nordin et al., 2009, p. 9). Therefore, public sector KM presents specific challenges due to specific organizational characteristics.
Second, the effectiveness of some private organizations inextricably links with the public sector. For example, universities and research centers are mainly public bodies in many countries. However, “the degree of impact of university activities on industrial innovation and the nature of the linkage used depend on the industry concerned, as well as the provision of appropriate policy for knowledge transfer” (Gertner et al., 2011, p. 626). Therefore, it is important to understand how public sector KM impacts on the private sector. Third, as Jain and...