Towards a typology of knowledge-intensive organizations: determinant factors

Phrases such as ‘knowledge-intensive organizations’ (KIOs) and ‘knowledge-intensive firms’ (KIFs), have recently found common usage, describing the distinct activities and attributes of some organizations. But a review of the literature reveals a lack of consensus among scholars and practitioners on the definition of KIOs. What is also absent from the discussion is an agreement on the factors that differentiate KIOs from non-KIOs, and how those factors affect knowledge management (KM) theory and practice. The objective of this paper is to extend a typology of KIOs as a preliminary step to conducting research on these types of organizations. With the typology of KIOs presented in this paper, we hope to provide a basis of distinguishing these organizations from other organizations, and also to allow one to perform comparative organizational analysis. The typology will also help researchers identify which of the organizations are knowledge-intense, and the nature of their knowledge-intensity, so that they help these organizations in designing appropriate KM tools.