Knowledge management in international organisations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the approaches of international organizations to fostering knowledge management.Design/methodology/approach – Two different approaches are used: First, presenting case studies on the United Nations Development Programme, the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the World Bank, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the OECD and the European Commission. Second, evaluation of the progress of the respective approaches by using common test criteria for knowledge management implementation established in the literature.Findings – It was found that all the institutions covered in this contribution have passed the stage of information management and have put active knowledge management systems in place. However, a structured and systematic management of implicit and external knowledge can be found to a lesser extent. Only a few international organizations like UNDP or the World Bank have pushed their knowledge management systems to integrate both inter...