Extending the people-process-technology triade in knowledge management: a cognitive perspective on multilevel knowledge flow

Abstract

This paper aims to reconceptualize knowledge management (KM) tools by integrating sociotechnical systems theory with insights from cognitive psychology. This conceptual paper is grounded in a Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) of an analytical corpus of 85 peer-reviewed studies retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science (documented through a preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses-inspired flow diagram), complemented by 54 theoretical and contextual sources supporting conceptual framing and interpretive translation. Prevailing KM frameworks largely conceptualize tools as organizational systems and infrastructures, emphasizing the codification and transfer of explicit knowledge while overlooking the cognitive dynamics through which individuals acquire, consolidate and mobilize knowledge. KM tools are more coherently understood as sociotechnical arrangements whose effectiveness depends on their alignment with core cognitive processes. Building on this insight, the CIS yields the Socio-Cognitive People–Process–Technology framework (SC-PPT), a reinterpretation of the conventional PPT model specifying how people-based practices, organizational processes and technological systems interact across individual, collective and organizational levels to enable sustainable knowledge flows. The paper enriches PPT-based approaches to KM tools with a cognitive perspective, showing that KM tools support knowledge flow not only through social, organizational or technological conditions but also through the cognitive processes of encoding, consolidation and retrieval. It thereby clarifies an underdeveloped cognitive dimension within PPT-based analyses of KM tool use.