Moving Beyond “Knowledge for Knowledge’s sake”
There are an assortment of disciplines that have influenced the field of Knowledge Management (KM) thinking and praxis – the most prominent are philosophy, in defining knowledge; cognitive science (in understanding knowledge workers); social science (in understanding motivation, people, interactions, culture and environment); management science (in optimising operations and integrating them within the enterprise); information science (in building knowledge-related capabilities); knowledge engineering (in eliciting and codifying knowledge); artificial intelligence (in automating routine and knowledge-intensive work) and economics (in determining priorities). As a result, there are enormous working definitions of KM and emergent philosophies circulating in the literature and around corporations of the world.
One cannot get a clear understanding and definition of what KM is without studying the various concepts of knowledge and information (including data), as well as the tacit, implicit, and explicit knowledge dimensions. Much of the still existing confusion that surrounds the topic of KM is based on the varied scholars’ interpretations and suggestions distinguishing the terms information and knowledge as well as the terms tacit, implicit, and explicit.
What is knowledge?
Some authors appear to try to avoid the epistemological debate on the definition of knowledge by comparing data, information, and knowledge. However, von Krogh et al. (2000) or Kakabadse et al.’s (2003) understanding of knowledge as ‘justified true belief” goes back to Michael Polanyi’s original work (we know more than we can express) (Polanyi 1958), an epistemological position which is acknowledged to have grown out of Plato’s discourses (Meno, Phaedo and Theaetetus). This definition has been particularly adopted by Western philosophy (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), which provides a comprehensive taxonomy of knowledge models, Plato’s concept was also debated from Aristotle, one of his students, throughout continental rationalism, as well as from German philosophy (Kant 1965; Marx 1976; Hegel 1977); British empiricism (Locke 1987) to twentieth-century philosophers (Dewey 1929; Sartre 1956; Habermas 1972; Tsoukas 1996; cited in Kakabdse et al. 2003, p. 77).
The above discourse implies that knowledge itself is a very multifaceted concept with many different variations and definitions. Based on the fact that the nature of knowledge is widely acknowledged on differing epistemological stands taken from the individual contributors, but led ultimately to the following definition of ‘knowledge’:
“Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organisations it often becomes embedded, not only in documents or repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices and norms.” (Davenport and Prusak 2000, p. 5).
Knowledge: Tacit/Implicit/Explicit
‘Tacit’ knowledge is not expressible and can in no way be made directly explicit or in other words codified into rules and formulations (e.g. the way a project manager behaviourally interacts or communicates during a conflict-solving process). In other words it has to do with an individual’s aptitude for doing things or even cognitively thinking about things.
‘Implicit’ knowledge is expressible and by applying appropriate knowledge management practices it has the chance to be made explicit. Thus, implicit knowledge is then transferred into explicit knowledge in a direct way. This process of transferring can be observed through the propagation, application, the amalgamation or the interpretation of explicit knowledge. Interestingly, from time to time, the terms ‘tacit’ and ‘implicit’ are used interchangeably..
‘Explicit’ knowledge is expressed implicit knowledge. There is enough evidence from the literature as well as from practice, suggesting that the two terms ‘explicit knowledge’ and ‘information’ have exactly the same meaning. In other words, explicit knowledge should be regarded as implicit knowledge, which when expressed becomes information. However, whereas the management of knowledge is mostly understood as the management of the processes, which can support the conversion of employees’ individual knowledge into overall organisational implicit knowledge, the management of explicit knowledge is understood as the management of knowledge-objects typically held as information in the organisation’s information base or systems in form of data records or documents.
The history of KM
Knowledge management (KM) is currently receiving significant attention, from both academics and practitioners, and is being addressed by broad range of academic literature and popular press. The study of human knowledge has been central subject matter of philosophy and epistemology since the ancient Greeks and western philosophers. Eastern philosophers, Tzu and Confucius in China and their contemporaries in India, have an equally long and well-documented tradition of emphasising knowledge and comprehension for the conduct of spiritual and secular life. The first attempts at KM, such as capture, storage and retrieval, began with the Cuneiform language in about 3000 BC.
A number of management theorists have contributed to the evolution of KM, among them such notables as Peter Drucker, Paul Strassmann, and Peter Senge in the United States. Drucker and Strassmann have stressed the growing importance of information and explicit knowledge as organisational resources, and Senge has focused on the “learning organisation,” a cultural dimension of managing knowledge. Chris Argyris, Christoper Bartlett, and Dorothy Leonard-Barton of Harvard Business School have all examined diverse aspects of managing knowledge. In fact, Leonard-Barton’s well-known case study of Chaparral Steel, a company which has had an effective KM strategy in place since the mid-1970s, inspired the research documented in her Wellsprings of Knowledge.
The 1980s also saw the development of systems for managing knowledge that relied on work done in artificial intelligence and expert systems, giving us such concepts as “knowledge acquisition,” “knowledge engineering,” “knowledge-base systems, and computer-based ontologies. Knowledge management-related articles began appearing in journals like Sloan Management Review, Organisational Science, Harvard Business Review, and others, and the first books on organisational learning and knowledge management were published (for example, Senge’s The Fifth Discipline and Sakaiya’s The Knowledge Value Revolution).
By 1990, a number of management consulting firms had begun in-house knowledge management programs, and several well known U.S., European, and Japanese firms had instituted focused knowledge management programs. Perhaps the most widely read work to date is Ikujiro Nonaka’s and Hirotaka Takeuchi’s The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation (1995).
By the mid-1990s, knowledge management initiatives were flourishing, thanks in part to the Internet. Knowledge management, which appears to offer a highly desirable alternative to failed TQM and business process re-engineering initiatives, has become big business for such major international consulting firms as Ernst & Young, Arthur Andersen, and Booz-Allen & Hamilton.
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