The 7C’s knowledge management (KM) models (part 1): Paul S. Myers model of KM effectiveness

In section 3.1 of their landmark 2023 review¹ of the past and future of knowledge management (KM) research and practice, John Edwards and Antti Lönnqvist alert to the continued over-reliance on well-known models from the earliest days of KM. Models such as Nonaka’s 1994 SECI model² and Ackoff’s 1989 data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) model³ remain a focus when newer models have emerged since drawing on a more recent evidence base. For example, David Williams’ 2014 action-knowledge-information (AKI) model⁴ is a highly coherent alternative to the DIKW model.

This two-part article series looks at two further more recent KM models that are worthy of attention: the 7C’s models. This first part looks at Paul S. Myers 2014 7C’s normative model of knowledge management effectiveness⁵. The second part looks at Harri Oinas-Kukkonen’s 2004 7C’s model for organizational knowledge creation and management, aspects of which build on Nonaka’s SECI model.

As shown in Figure 1, Paul S. Myers normative model of KM effectiveness starts with the desired outcome – effectiveness – and traces backwards to identify the organizational capabilities most likely to help an enterprise achieve it.

Myers states that the motivation behind the model was to synthesize what researchers had learned in the previous two decades about the factors associated with KM success and to present the result in a format that is useful for both theory and practice. Practitioners may find the model a good starting point for planning KM initiatives or assessing and improving existing ones. For academics, the model can be the basis for developing and refining existing ideas about influential factors and causal links.

As alliterative lists can support understanding and application for both audiences, Myers has abstracted key concepts from the normative model above to form the “7C’s model” shown in Figure 2.

The 7C’s of the model are:

1. Connection: provide all people in the organization access to all relevant information. Connection relates to technologies that enable collaboration and communication, norms for interaction that guide information sharing, and principles that engender trust, empathy and commitment. Without connection, the right knowledge cannot flow to the right people at the right time.
2. Competencies: people have the skills and characteristics for the exploitation and exploration of knowledge. The normative model includes several sets of aptitudes, attitudes, and abilities needed to support collaboration, communication, and commitment. HRM practices for recruitment, selection, retention, rewards, and training are the primary means for ensuring that people have the ability and motivation to participate effectively in KM efforts. These can be important indicators of an organizational culture that values learning and recognizes that superordinate goals can only be achieved through the contributions of individuals.
3. Contacts: facilitate and encourage relationship between people. Contacts relates to the flat organizational structures and cross-functional teams that are adaptive and integrative; the networks that facilitate pursuit, discovery, and maintenance of relationships; and IT systems that enable collaboration and communication.
4. Communication: create an IT system that supports the exploitation and exploration of knowledge. Whether through documents or conversations, knowledge activities (e.g., creation, acquisition, sharing and use) require communication and a technology infrastructure that enables it.
5. Catalysts: motivate people. Catalysts here refers to factors that provide intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for participation in KM activities. These include leaders who build consensus on the value of KM and inspire commitment to learning as well as HRM practices that reward and recognize individual effort.
6. Culture: Create a group identity by aligning values and organizational practices. The normative model speaks to culture in many ways, most prominently in the discussion of values that support collaboration and commitment.
7. Capability: A system-based advantage that is difficult to replicate by competitors. The final “C” is capability. The normative model is based on the idea that each of the other “C”s together comprise an organization’s KM capability.

Header image source: © Paul S. Myers, 2014.

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