Karl-Erik Sveiby

• PhD, Professor Emeritus
• Professor Emeritus at Hanken School of Economics

The research into measuring the Intangible Assets or the Intellectual Capital of companies has produced a plethora of proposed methods and theories. This is a Paper I begun publishing on my website in 2001. It provides a brief overview of methods that I have come across with links to the source. The list is an ever-expanding community effort, so if...

Although innovation is one of the most commonly mentioned concepts in social science unintended undesirable consequences of innovation are rarely studied. This study does a literature review of all articles in the EBSCO database, with innovation in the title and which study undesirable consequences. We found only 26 such articles; 1 per 1000, a pro...

Using Schumpeter’s concept ‘creative destruction’ as the starting point, we approach innovation as a discursive terrain where discourses compete to ascribe meanings to innovation. We conduct a discourse analysis of the most influential management articles to explore the dominant academic management discourse of innovation. The analysis shows that t...

A light-hearted take on a serious subject. Based on Viking Era sayings.

Three theories for organising effective knowledge work with the purpose to improve professional development for knowledge workers. Originally written 2003

The Mission of the ancient Nhunggabarra people fascinates young people of today. So much so that my daughter,Karolina Sveiby was inspired to write a song with the theme. She is performing it together with - among others - the didgeridoo player, Robin Åkerberg. Robin is only 12 years old and learned to play during the year he lived with his family i...

The article applies the concept of incompetence by Polanyi (1962) and the concept of unintended consequences by Merton (1936) to explore the development of a radical financial innovation, securitisation. This innovation changed the context for all actors in the financial industry to such a degree that even the highest regarded experts repeatedly ma...

This article draws upon Australian Aboriginal knowledge in traditional law stories and anthropological studies of contemporary African bands. It applies the DAC ontology (Drath et al., 2008) to analyse two collective leadership models developed by forager peoples: one egalitarian ‘upside-down hierarchy’ and one power-symmetric model. Their existenc...

Sustainable development has become an arena where people bring already existing political and philosophical outlooks to a debate characterized by fundamental dichotomies. This paper presents an analysis of ten Australian Aboriginal law stories to derive a range of principles for how the Nhunggabarra people of Australia sustained their society again...

Purpose The paper's aim is, in a framework of intellectual capital (IC), to study the interactions of a worksite fitness program (WFP) policy with a multidisciplinary approach in an IT‐company of 220 employees. Design/methodology/approach In a five years follow‐up setting, the associations of physical activity and the company's worksite fitness po...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse issues that prevent knowledge sharing in organisations. Design/methodology/approach - The paper contains content analysis of 691 free text comments about the climate for knowledge sharing provided by 848 employees, primarily knowledge workers, in 92 business units and departments. Findings - The pap...

Purpose The impact of knowledge management on the financial success of companies has not yet been properly researched. This paper aims to make a contribution by examining the relationship between sustainable sales growth and knowledge management activities in 108 Finnish small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach Data w...

Measure for learning. This article addresses a rarely asked question: why measure intangibles? Unless the propose of measuring is explicitly addressed, the resulting measuring system becomes open to manipulation. The argument is that a measuring system aimed at learning rather than performance minimises manipulation issues and maximises value creat...

Suggests that collaborative climate is one of the major factors influencing effectiveness of knowledge work. Discusses the concept of collaborative climate and develops a survey instrument to measure it. Presents results based on data from 8,277 respondents in a wide variety of public and private sector organisations. Collaborative climate tends to...

This article is seeking to explore the practical implications of an epistemological approach to strategy formulation. In doing so it tries to expand the field of knowledge management and intellectual capital beyond its operational and often inwardly technological focus to a new theory of the firm. A resource-based perspective is suggested, using au...

This book offers a close-up look at a factory in Japan that is typical of what the author calls 'Knowledge Works'. Like so many Japanese factories, this one - the Yanagicho works of the Toshiba Corporation - is highly productive, efficient, and flexible. While the factory is ordinary looking on the outside, its workers are anything but ordinary as...

A “Swedish Community of Practice” emerged during the mid 1980s in Sweden. The “community” today follows two tracks; one is Human Resource Costing & Accounting (HRCA) and the other is a nonfinancial measurement system for intangible assets based on a theory originally brought forward by a work group consisting of members from several Swedish knowled...

Karl Erik Sveiby starts out with a big advantage over most of the authors and consultants offering their views and services about knowledge management. In his latest book, The New Organizational Wealth, he expands on his insights as a managing partner in building Affärsvälden, which grew from 10 people when it was founded in 1979 to one of Sweden's...

Incluye índice Incluye bibliografía Partes del texto: La era de las organizaciones y la industria del conocimiento; Administración de bienes intangibles; Midiendo y valuando bienes intangibles.

How is Knowledge best transferred? Via Information or via Tradition (face-to-face socialization)? This Article draws upon Michael Polanyi's concepts of ‘Tacit Knowing’ and ‘Tradition’, contrasting it with Information Theory to explore the two methods. The present growth in information seems to be a supply push, not a customer demand, which is poten...

This paper is a consolidation of several papers on measuring intangibles, previously published on my website as separate html-files. The consolidated paper is aimed at knowledge managers and other managers with an interest in learning by measuring. The paper deals with Measuring Competence, Measuring External Structure and Measuring Internal Struct...

Thesis (doctoral)--Stockholm University, 1994.

Forword The Invisible Balance Sheet is the translation of Den Osynliga Balansäkningen, an attempt to show the management of know-how companies practical methods and procedures for presenting their company’s most important resource, its personnel, in a more informative way than through pretty colour photographs. The book defines and describes more t...

This paper reports on a project which integrates the pioneering work on 'intangible assets' by Karl-Erik Sveiby with system dynamics based human capital modelling undertaken for the Australian Federal Public Service by the UNSW Centre for Business Dynamics. The project aims to create a dynamic 'management flight simulator' which helps managers unde...

The parallel development of theories and practice in Sweden and in the US laid the foundation for a first standard for accounting in the Knowledge Economy, featuring three categories of Intangible Assets plus a fourth category, financial assets. The practical results suggest that it is useful to measure Intangible assets and that it is possible for...

Thesis (doctoral)--Stockholm University, 1994.

La economía basada en el conocimiento. El caso de España -- La gestión del conocimiento en el ámbito empresarial -- Visión y estrategia del conocimiento -- Escenarios de implantación -- La tecnología aplicable a la gestión del conocimiento -- Gestión de la información y gestión de contenidos -- Gestión del conocimiento y aprendizaje organizacional...