The continuous recombination of codification and personalisation KM strategies: A longitudinal study

The notion of Knowledge Management (KM) strategy has long attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners. The literature provides evidence of different possible KM strategies. Particularly, an important distinction has been made between codification and personalization. While these can be seen to be alternative to one another, some studies argue that a company can follow a strategy that mixes the two approaches. The effective combination of personalization and codification may depend on the interaction of diverse factors, such as competition, leadership, politics, culture, technology. On this issue, however, the literature still provides mixed and sometimes contrasting results. Furthermore, available empirical studies are based on case studies of the KM strategic approach of one or more companies at a specific point in time. Instead, it may be interesting to check if conditions that change through time may also induce changes in a firm’s KM strategy. This study aims to analyse how the mix of codification and personalisation can vary over time in the same company, due to changing organizational and environmental conditions. With this purpose, the evolution of KM initiatives of a multinational company has been investigated. The findings not only add to what already emerged in previous literature, but also better highlight the interrelations between the various factors that influence these changes. Lastly, the study raises the question of whether the classic distinction between codification and personalization strategies has still a practical usefulness or is just a simple abstract reference: this point can represent a fresh start of a future research agenda.