Primary contexts that Knowledge architectures exist are given below:
1. Strategic context:
Strategic context addresses an organization’s intent and ability to exploit its knowledge and learning capabilities better than the competition.
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It includes the extent to which the members of an organization believe that superior knowledge provides a competitive advantage, and how they explicitly link strategy, knowledge and performance.
This articulation guides their deployment of organizational arid technological resources and capabilities for explicating and leveraging knowledge, increasing the probability of their adding value.
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2. Knowledge context:
Knowledge context addresses the competitiveness of an organization’s knowledge. Existing knowledge can be compared to what an organization must know to execute its strategy.
Where there are current or future gaps, KM efforts should be directed towards closing them, assuring a strategic focus. Organizations must also assess the quality of their knowledge, relative to their competition to determine its strategic value.
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To the extent that the bulk of organization’s knowledge is common and basic, that knowledge will provide less competitive advantage than if the firm’s knowledge is unique and innovative. Explicating and leveraging that innovative knowledge can provide the greatest competitive benefit.
3. Organizational context:
Organizational context reflects the organization roles and structure, formal and informal, as well as the socio-cultural factors affecting KM such as culture, power relations, norms, reward systems, and management philosophy.
Beyond the KM roles proposed earlier, effective knowledge creation, sharing, and leveraging requires an organizational climate and reward System that values and encourages cooperation, trust, learning, and innovation and provides incentives for engaging in those knowledge-based roles, activities, and processes.
4. Technology context:
Technology context addresses the existing IT infrastructure and capabilities supporting the KM architecture.
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While the adage is that KM is 10% technology and 90% people, without the ability to collect, index, store, and distribute explicit knowledge electronically and seamlessly to where needed when needed, the organizational capabilities and incentives will not be fully exploited.