The changing and complex demands of social and productive practice, globalization processes, increased competitiveness and technological development have highlighted the need for changes in any type of organization (Anderson, 2010; Brown, Leach and Covey, 2008). . This especially happens in educational centers, which are forced to be more innovative, creative and efficient if they intend to encompass emerging complexity.
Associated with the emergence of knowledge, as one of the prominent protagonists of today’s society and a fundamental element for the success of any type of organization (Davis, Subrahmanian and Westerberg, 2005; Hislop, 2005; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Senge, 1992), the Creation and Management of Knowledge has become a key strategy in organizations of the 20th century. XXI, since its development allows the members of these organizations to generate innovations that ensure their future (Albers, 2008). We link, therefore, the capacity of an organization to innovate to its capacity to generate new knowledge (Aramburu, Sáenz and Rivera, 2006; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). In the words of Harris (2008), “human knowledge management is a critical dimension for organizational survival” (p.219).
Although we have no doubt about the important projection of Knowledge Creation and Management in the organizational field (Davenport and Prusak, 2001; McElroy, 2003; Holsapple and Wu, 2008; Jamielniak and Kociatkiewicz, 2009; Lloria, 2008) there are few studies that, on this discipline, are done from an educational perspective and, specifically, from school organization and management, as a specific area of knowledge in which this type of studies should be framed.
Faced with an object of study as broad and complex as “Knowledge Creation and Management”, its limitation seems evident and necessary, as an object of research in a doctoral thesis. Thus, as its title is derived, we focus our research on the study of the conditioning factors of Knowledge Creation and Management in educational organizations.
The limited implementation and success of Knowledge Creation and Management processes in educational organizations justifies our interest in the delimitation of the determining factors of Knowledge Creation and Management in this type of organizations, since if we are able to outline the elements that determine that the application of a Knowledge Creation and Management strategy has more or less probability of success in an educational organization, we will be taking a huge step in the generalization of this management strategy in the educational field.
Specifically, the purpose of this thesis is to explore, describe, understand, analyze and explain the conditioning factors (barriers and facilitators) of the Knowledge Creation and Management processes developed within the framework of educational organizations. These conditions are understood as those factors that promote or inhibit the Creation and Management of Knowledge.
Having stated the problem and purpose of our thesis, we now move on to comment on the structure of the work.
The theoretical framework of the research is structured in two clearly different parts, preceded by a first chapter in which, basically, we present and justify the object of study and specify the objectives of the research: Part I: Context and purpose of Creation and Knowledge Management. The Creation and Management of Knowledge, as a strategy and organizational process, cannot be understood apart from organizations, nor from other organizational processes with greater tradition. Thus, we begin the approach to the Creation and Management of Knowledge from the review of the processes of organizational development and innovation (chapter 2), the theories of organizational learning and learning organizations (chapter 3) and professional development (chapter 4).
¿ Part II: The Creation and Management of Knowledge. Once the organizational framework that gives meaning to the approaches of Knowledge Creation and Management has been established, during this second part of the theoretical framework we delve into the processes, models, conditions, tools and measurement methods of Knowledge Creation and Management. (chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8).
After specifying and justifying, during the first chapters, the research problem, the purpose and objectives of the study presented and the theoretical review that serves as a reference for the understanding and delimitation of the object of study, we open Part III of the thesis, entitled “Applied Framework”, and in which we offer a detailed description of the design and development of the research (chapters 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13).
Finally, we close the thesis, but not the research, with the conclusions, limitations of the study and future prospects lines of research (part IV, chapter 14).