Knowledge Sharing Strategies for Project Knowledge Management in the Automotive Sector

Project Knowledge Management is regarded as a field of increasing importance for both researchers and organisations. This led Volvo Technology, the innovation business unit within a Swedish automotive multinational corporation, to explore through a qualitative case study how Project Knowledge Management could be improved to support knowledge sharing between projects within the organisation. The current situation of Project Knowledge Management is described through a developed theoretical framework and with input from thirteen semi-structured interviews conducted and analysed in an iterative fashion. The description shows that the contributor employs the codification strategy to share knowledge with other projects while the receiver adapts a personalisation strategy to retrieve knowledge from other projects. This description was analysed and compared with current research through brainstorming. Since there are current initiatives within the organisation to improve the codification strategy, this research focuses on improving the personalisation strategy. The recommendation was to promote Communities of Practice. Six semi-structured interviews were conducted to evaluate the relevance of the recommendations. The recommendation was found to be relevant for improving Project Knowledge Management within Volvo Technology.