In the current knowledge economy, knowledge represents the most strategically significant resource of organizations. Knowledge-intensive activities advance innovation and create and sustain economic rent and competitive advantage. In order to sustain competitive advantage, organizations must protect knowledge from leakage to third parties, particularly competitors. However, the number and scale of leakage incidents reported in news media as well as industry whitepapers suggests that modern organizations struggle with the protection of sensitive data and organizational knowledge. The increasing use of mobile devices and technologies by knowledge workers across the organizational perimeter has dramatically increased the attack surface of organizations, and the corresponding level of risk exposure. While much of the literature has focused on technology risks that lead to information leakage, human risks that lead to knowledge leakage are relatively understudied. Further, not much is known about strategies to mitigate the risk of knowledge leakage using mobile devices, especially considering the human aspect. Specifically, this research study identified three gaps in the current literature (1) lack of in-depth studies that provide specific strategies for knowledge-intensive organizations based on their varied risk levels. Most of the analysed studies provide high-level strategies that are presented in a generalised manner and fail to identify specific strategies for different organizations and risk levels. (2) lack of research into management of knowledge in the context of mobile devices. And (3) lack of research into the tacit dimension of knowledge as the majority of the literature focuses on formal and informal strategies to protect explicit (codified) knowledge.

翻译：在当今知识经济时代，知识已成为组织最具战略意义的资源。知识密集型活动推动创新，创造并维持经济租金与竞争优势。为维持竞争优势，组织必须防范知识泄露给第三方（尤其是竞争对手）。然而，新闻媒体及行业白皮书报道的泄露事件数量与规模表明，现代组织在敏感数据与组织知识保护方面面临严峻挑战。知识工作者跨越组织边界日益频繁地使用移动设备与技术，极大扩展了组织的攻击面及相应风险暴露水平。现有文献多聚焦导致信息泄露的技术风险，而关于人力风险引发知识泄露的研究相对不足。此外，针对使用移动设备时（特别是考虑人力因素）缓解知识泄露风险的策略尚不明确。具体而言，本研究指出现有文献的三项空白：（1）缺乏基于不同风险水平为知识密集型组织提供具体策略的深度研究——多数研究仅提出泛化性高层策略，未能针对不同组织及风险等级制定差异化方案；（2）移动设备情境下的知识管理研究匮乏；（3）知识的隐性维度研究不足——现有文献主要关注保护显性（编码化）知识的正式与非正式策略。