The Effect of Knowledge Management Systems On
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This electronic representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for non-commercial use only. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please see RAND Permissions. This product is part of the Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) dissertation series. PRGS dissertations are produced by graduate fellows of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the world’s leading producer of Ph.D.’s in policy analysis. The dissertation has been supervised, reviewed, and approved by the graduate fellow’s faculty committee. The Effect of Knowledge Management Systems on Organizational Performance Do Soldier and Unit Counterinsurgency Knowledge and Performance Improve Following “Push” or “Adaptive-Push” Training? S. Jamie Gayton This document was submitted as a dissertation in June 2009 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in public policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. The faculty committee that supervised and approved the dissertation consisted of Bryan W. Hallmark (Chair), James T. Quinlivan, and Matthew W. Lewis. PARDEE RAND GRADUATE SCHOOL The Pardee RAND Graduate School dissertation series reproduces dissertations that have been approved by the student’s dissertation committee. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. R® is a registered trademark. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from RAND. Published 2009 by the RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 1200 South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202-5050 4570 Fifth Avenue, Suite 600, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2665 RAND URL: http://www.rand.org To order RAND documents or to obtain additional information, contact Distribution Services: Telephone: (310) 451-7002; Fax: (310) 451-6915; Email: [email protected] - iii - PREFACE My interest in Knowledge Management Systems stems from my experience commanding a battalion during Operation Iraqi Freedom III in Baghdad, Iraq. Prior to deployment, I wanted to provide my leaders the most up to date information available on the enemy’s use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In order to acquire and organize this type of information, I went to the Army’s Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) website and began searching through myriad data on the subject. When I called the organization to find their synthesized, pruned, “push” version of the slides that would contain the information I requested, I was directed back to the myriad data. I was stymied. Despite tremendous amounts of available data, the organization was counting on an inefficient strategy in which each leader used his time to synthesize and prune the data to prepare it for his subordinates. I noted at the time that a more efficient and effective means of distributing tactical information must be possible and planned to engage this possibility at some point in the future. Upon reassignment to the Pardee RAND Graduate School to pursue a doctoral degree, I had the opportunity to study the possibility of changing aspects of the Army’s knowledge management systems. There are leaders in the Army who are proponents of the SWfF concept and accept without empirical support that organizations that use the SWfF tools, including push tools, will increase their performance. At the same time, there are other leaders who question the need for the SWfF organization and in particular the underlying assumption of increased performance of units as they use the tools. My knowledge management research opportunity came in the form of a RAND Arroyo project to conduct an empirical assessment of the Stryker Warfighters’ Forum (SWfF) organization’s contribution to learning for soldiers and units preparing for a contingency deployment. During my project research, I became specifically interested in how the delivery method of information would affect performance. This dissertation was submitted to the Pardee RAND Graduate School in 2009 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Policy Analysis. The dissertation examined the relationship between the use of knowledge management systems and the subsequent gain in knowledge by individuals and the increase in performance by organizations. Specifically, I empirically assessed the “push” delivery - iv - method (leaders identify and push relevant information to subordinates) and “adaptive-push” delivery method (leaders and subordinates interact to identify relevant information and leaders push to subordinates). I examined this relationship by empirically assessing the knowledge gain in soldiers and the performance increase by units through two studies. In the first study, soldiers received information using a push delivery method and in the second study they received information through an adaptive-push delivery method. - v - CONTENTS Preface........................................................................................................................................................... iii Figures............................................................................................................................................................ix Tables .............................................................................................................................................................xi Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................... xiii Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................................................xv Acronyms and Glossary ...............................................................................................................................xix 1. Specific Aims and Research Questions......................................................................................................1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................1 Broad policy issue and policy questions ...........................................................................................2 SWfF policy issue, policy questions, and research questions ...........................................................5 Specific aims and desired outcomes of KMS research .....................................................................6 2. Background, Significance, Motivation, and Literature Review ...........................................................8 Army’s success with major combat operations.................................................................................9 Counterinsurgency and stability operations become the norm........................................................10 The Army transitions to a new vehicle – Stryker - and establishes SWfF......................................11 SWfF history, mission, and supporting tasks..................................................................................13 SWfF oversight, direction, and a desire for assessment/validation.................................................15 SWfF validation significance ....................................................................................................16 The Army needs a better method to capture untapped experience..................................................17 Units have limited time to prepare for future deployments .......................................................17 The expertise developed during deployments is an untapped pool of knowledge to train soldiers that is not effectively utilized today........................................................................18 KMS could be a method to systematically capture, synthesize, and transfer