How Knowledge Externalization and Combination Process Influences Knowledge Utilization?

– In the Field of Software Quality Management–

Abstract

The authors have a hypothesis that there are three factors to build an organizational systematic knowledge for right corrective action especially in the field of production management: the depth of externalized knowledge, the degree of knowledge externalization, and the degree of knowledge usage. In this paper, the authors propose a knowledge utilization model and derive its statistical models by using the questionnaire data collected from Japanese software quality management practitioners. The result showed that the different models were derived corresponding to knowledge domains, and that both surface and deep level externalized knowledge have influences on knowledge utilization especially for the knowledge domain of post-release software problems.