Knowledge management is an emerging business practice throughout commercial industry and is becoming more recognized as a valuable concept in the Department of Defense and the Federal government. In March 2001, Captain William Bower completed a research effort that proposed a framework model for guiding the identification and selection of knowledge management initiatives within the Air Force.

The members of the Delphi committee that participated in the original research to develop the decision framework recommended that organizational culture be more emphasized. Therefore, this research effort evaluated the decision framework proposed by Captain Bower and adapted the framework by including organizational culture. To incorporate organizational culture into the framework, this research identified cultural factors that can be assessed to determine whether or not a given organizational culture is ready to implement knowledge management initiatives. An additional step was then added to the original decision framework; this step is focused on determining whether or not an organizations culture is knowledge friendly.