The Knowledge Retrieval Matrix: Codification and Personification as Separate Strategies

AbstractPrevious discussions of knowledge transfer within multinational corporations tended tofocus on the process as an isolated phenomenon and on the factors that impede the process.Less attention has been given to how the individual knowledge worker retrieves or identifies,and then decodes knowledge accessed from the corporate memory. We suggest thatmultinational companies (MNCs) solve knowledge retrieval problems by implementingvirtual communities of practice - intranet-based collaborative forums. Codification andpersonalization strategies have previously been emphasized as an either-or solution. Thesevirtual communities of practice combine the codification and personalization strategies,simultaneously utilizing the advantages of two approaches.