Abstract
With the advent of modern information and communication technologies the discussion about organisational learning and knowledge management has found its technological counterpart: knowledge management systems (KMS). KMS are seen as enabling technologies for an effective and especially an efficient knowledge management. Knowledge management initiatives comprise a combined application of KMS, organisational and person-oriented instruments which consider the organisation's culture and promise mise competitive advantages or improved capabilities to develop and apply organisational (core) competencies. There have been a number of corresponding success stories published in the literature. However, up to date organisations still face the challenge to measure or evaluate the success of the application of KMS. This paper proposes a framework for precisely this task. We used existing approaches to measure success of information systems and transferred them to KMS. Additionally, we integrated contributions from the knowledge management literature as well as results of an empirical analysis about the application of KMS in German speaking countries. The resulting model presents a list of measures to assess the success of KMS. The applicability of the model is discussed using two ideal KMS architectures as well as a case study of a software house that already applies KMS. Organisations can use the model as a pool to select measures from which can be applied for concrete KMS evaluations. From a research-oriented perspective the model is useful to generate hypotheses about relationships between goals and application scenarios of KMS and the resulting success.