The Role of Network Layers in Supporting Knowledge Management Implementations

Knowledge management (KM) approach has been adopted in virtually every business unit in organizations as a means to improve the competitive advantages of organizations. The benefits of KM in maximizing resources and at the same time minimizing costs are two important economic advantages of knowledge management. The organizations focus on how to improve the knowledge management implementation through adopting efficient knowledge management processes to manage the explicit and tacit knowledge. Most researchers focus on managing knowledge activities using IT services based on the interrelation between knowledge management processes. Knowledge management processes can be managed by having the architecture of IT infrastructure, i. e. network layers to provide effective integration between knowledge management layers and the architecture of IT infrastructures. This paper focuses on managing the knowledge processes based on network layers rather than IT services to maximize the management performance of knowledge implementations. The literature review is the main basement of this research. The knowledge management processes could be integrated efficiently depending on three main network layers, service agreement layer, management agreement layer, and infrastructure layer.