Abstract

Knowledge has become increasingly relevant for organizations since the shift from an industrial economy based on assembly lines and hierarchical control to a global, decentralized, information-driven economy (Barua, 1996; Levine, 1995). Although knowledge is a wider concept than information because it is based also on expertise, we can consider the Information Management as the enabler for the Knowledge Management (KM). In particular, KM is viewed as an emergent process in which bits and pieces of information are integrated, within and across organizational boundaries, to produce and share new knowledge. Thus, the basic aim of KM is to capture and increase the knowledge of individuals. We are going to consider the perspective according to which the organization is a knowledge transfer system (Hertog and Huizenga, 2000), since virtual corporations are based on technological and communication means that help it. After defining why the knowledge dissemination is a win strategy for people within an organization, we are going to describe how managers can promote it. In this respect, we consider the cooperative banks experience in Italy very interesting. In order to exploit the power coming from their institutional network, they decide to create a unique knowledge management system in which competences and process are shared by all banks participating to the virtual network.

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