What is the Role of Knowledge Management in Establishing the Effectiveness of Public Welfare Services?

Abstract

Because of the increasing cooperation of actors in public service systems, the evaluation of service outcomes involves a complex set of information sources and processes. Organization‐specific evaluation practices yield only a partial picture of the effectiveness of services. To address this issue, the paper studies the information processes in the context of Finnish social services and analyzes knowledge‐related problems in system‐level performance measurement. As a result, this paper proposes that more systematic knowledge management is needed in order to provide valid information on the effectiveness of public welfare services. The findings contribute to the study, analysis, and implementation of knowledge management in the public domain. We further provide a discussion relating to the challenges in measuring service effectiveness of information processes with respect to gathering, combining, and presenting performance information. This research adds to the literature by presenting a system‐level analysis of information flows and pinpointing the most crucial disconnects with respect to these flows. The results that we present have clear implications for strategic and political decision‐making. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effects of knowledge management on the management of health and social care: a systematic literature review

“…Indeed, customers' role and knowledge are important components of value co-creation and KM is a mediating factor in this process (Caputo et al, 2019). Moreover, the distinct logics of financial management and well-being Laihonen and Kokko (2020) are omnipresent in this context and KM should provide decision-makers with balanced information for use in planning and implementing not only the most effective KM initiatives but also, more importantly, efficient and effective services in health and social care (Ikonen, 2020;Laihonen and Sillanpa ¨a ¨, 2014). Finally, the review evidenced a need for KM research to move from listing the expectations to determining the realized and verified effects of various KM initiatives.…”

“…According to a geographical breakdown, no continent was ahead of any other. The number of studies by continent was distributed as follows: Europe, four studies (Simonen et al, 2011;De Angelis, 2013;Laihonen and Sillanpa ¨a ¨, 2014;Ikonen, 2020), Asia, four studies (Hamidi et al, 2016;Najmi et al, 2017;Tamanna and Sharma, 2019;Ganguly et al, 2020), North America, two studies Sibbald et al (2016), Parast and Golmohammadi (2019) and Australasia, one study (Massingham et al, 2018). It is also interesting to note that no study offered a perspective on the international context.…”

“…All the secondary health care managers and department directors followed a strategy of larger assessment of matters within an organization, which is part of knowledge management. In knowledge management, the use of knowledge is tied to the strategic management and decision-making of an organization Excellent Notes: PLS = Partial least squares; CFA = confirmatory factor analysis; OI = organizational intelligence; SPSS = statistical package for the social sciences; HC = healthcare comprised integrated health and social care (Ikonen, 2020;Laihonen and Sillanpa ¨a ¨, 2014). The paucity of KM research in the management of social services or social care raises the question how researchers in different parts of the world perceive and define social services.…”

“…The outcome category realized, "improved organizational performance", highlighted the pivotal role and importance of performance measurement and performance indicators Simonen et al (2011), De Angelis (2013), Hamidi et al (2016) in cost control (Najmi et al, 2017;Tamanna and Sharma, 2019). The literature focused not only on the role of KM in the performance management of individual health and social care organizations but also on its role in assessing the effectiveness of the service system more widely (Laihonen and Sillanpa ¨a ¨, 2014;Ikonen, 2020). Indeed, KM was considered to help in identifying important resources, reforming processes, applying new managerial tools and improving customer satisfaction (Hamidi et al, 2016).…”

Designing a maturity model for analyzing information and knowledge management in the public sector

“…Choo's model is generally applied in the information management field as it includes common phases that are needed in information handling, such as gathering, organizing, storing and utilization. However, this process model has also been applied in managing knowledge (Känsäkoski, 2017;Laihonen and Sillanpää, 2014), as knowledge is ultimately enriched from data and information. As Choo (2002, p. 8) states:…”