An analysis of the relationship between knowledge management and project performance: Literature review and conceptual framework

Abstract

Knowledge management is a key resource for enabling projects and organizations to address the current challenges of competitive environment. This article aims to investigate the central themes of knowledge management in the project context, exploring the relationship between knowledge management and project performance. For this purpose, a literature review was carried out, adopting bibliometric analysis, codification and content analysis. The search and sampling process was conducted in the Web of Knowledge (Web of Science Core Collection) database. First, the results identified the main strategies to deal with tacit and explicit knowledge, which are experts’ knowledge acquisition and project documentation through coded forms, respectively. Both types of knowledge, tacit and explicit, are strongly related to two of the project success dimensions: GP efficiency, and success of the product/service. The literature pointed out that organizations recognize the importance of knowledge management but they still face many barriers to implement it in practice. The publications allowed verifying that the subjects are still little related, making it a challenging field for future studies.