Knowledge Management Pattern for Project-Based Organizations in Energy Industry: A Grounded Theory Study

Knowledge management (KM) has been considered as an important competitive advantage for all kinds of organizations, including energy sector. Executing research and development (R&D) projects of energy industry (RDEI) will create, share, and reuse a huge amount of knowledge, and few organizations know how to manage it effectively. Thus, finding a customized KM pattern which matches specific factors of the RDEI is a major concern of managers. This paper aims to present a customized KM pattern for the R&D projects of the studied sector considering project-based organization characteristics by using grounded theory. Needed information is gathered by semistructured interviews with experts. By using open, axial, and selective coding, the components of the final model and their relations were found. The results showed 48 open codes, 15 main and 5 secondary concepts which were all formed in “causal situations”, “intervention situations”, “strategies”, “pivot phenomena” and “effects”.