A Contingency Perspective for Knowledge Management Solutions in Different Decision-Making Contexts

Abstract

A contingency perspective of knowledge management, as one of the popular ways of promoting decision making capabilities, recognizes the need for a fit between knowledge management solutions (KMS) and decision-making contexts which they support. In order to determine the best fit, a field survey was carried out to investigate the impact of two different types of KMS (technical and social) on decision makers' behavior and performance in different decision contexts (simple and complex). According to the results, there is a partial support for the contingency view. As expected, social KMS appears as the best fit for complex contexts, based on subjects' superior performance from comparable adoption of both KMS. In contrast, the results suggest that both KMS were an equally good fit for simple contexts, based on similar levels of subjects' performance, but social KMS was preferred in terms of adoption. These findings contribute to much necessary empirical evidence for research and provide useful guidance for practice. However, their limitations necessitate further study.